Mobile equipment management in a plant is a daunting task. Plant/Warehouse management is under constant pressure to improve efficiency while reducing costs. Safety agency regulations, reducing abuse related damage, maintenance scheduling and utilization monitoring are major components of forklift fleet management. These functions often require multiple people who already perform other functions.

Let’s look at this scenario. Your fleet size is 100. Your operation is 3 shifts per day. Approximately 275 operators will operate your fleet in course of a day. According to OSHA 1910.178, each operator is required to perform Pre-shift Safety Checklist. Each operator must be trained and certified to operate the equipment. It is Safety department’s responsibility to ensure their training certification is valid. Nine out of ten companies track certification manually. Imagine time and effort involved in tracking hundreds of employees. Now add high turn over which is very common in distribution centers.

Provided all operators are certified, in one day you will have at least 275 paper checklists, if they follow the procedure. Any issues found must be reported to designated personnel. Consider the time to collect and review these checklists.

While operators are performing their jobs, if equipment is not used per training or abused, the damage may not be limited to equipment but extend to merchandize, facility and possibly cause physical injury to personnel. Costs associated to such damages can only be quantified if records are kept which most companies don’t.

PM scheduling is another area where due to lack if Hour Meter Reading, maintenance is performed by calendar. Your equipment usage may not be balanced and consistent. Calendar based maintenance may cause over or under maintenance which may seem fine on the surface but on long run breakdown maintenance can be higher or PM cost can be higher.

This is big one. How many companies really “know” their actual usage of equipment? Over 70% companies don’t know their usage and their fleet size is larger than it should be. Major reasons are lack of information and fear of running short in peak period. If equipment usage is not higher, chances are people hired to operate them can be reassigned to other tasks and maintenance costs can be lowered, if managers have information.

There are underlying issues such as productivity, employee morale, unscheduled downtime which can further affect bottom line. Sadly, most companies have accepted (if recognized) these costs as part of their operation and include in operational budget. Progressive and proactive companies have realized the impact on their operation and begun implementing solutions which address above issues. Companies who implement properly and take ownership of the system, can and will realize ROI within months.

To learn how ACG can help you achieve this, click on Vigilant G2 and Assetor and call us to discuss your challenges. You will be glad to learn that there are several ways to curb your costs and improve your bottom line.