The Ultimate Guide to Implementing Predictive Maintenance - Part 1

This blog is Part 1 of the 3-part series for assisting fleet and operations professionals in successfully implementing predictive maintenance solutions within their businesses.

Preface

The last decade has been full of innovation, challenges, and great advances for maintenance and fleet professionals across industries. Businesses have invested heavily in digital transformation, regardless of size and scale, to address operational challenges, save money, and deliver an improved customer experience. 

Some of the technologies that have paved the way to get the industry to this point are telematics, maintenance management systems, workflow automation, communication, collaboration tools, and many others. Predictive maintenance technologies, such as Pitstop, leverages the underlying set of data, infrastructure, and operational practices to help operations staff have an oversight that they have not had before.

Commercial fleets often operate in hyper-competitive service industries where cost differentiation and operational improvements are key to improving their bottom line. Predictive intelligence allows a new set of data points and different decisions that the business can make to drive operational innovation.

Below is the first part of a 3-series guide in assisting fleet and operations professionals in successfully implementing predictive maintenance solutions within their businesses.

What is Predictive Maintenance with AI?

Predictive maintenance solutions focus on using existing operational and sensory data to understand operations and predict potential threats ahead of time by applying advanced mathematical techniques to the data set. In essence, predictive maintenance is able to alert a manager of a real-world failure ahead of time by using the existing available data. 

Pitstop uses data from telematics, service history, OEMs, and several other data sources to make this magic happen. These data sets then go through Pitstop’s proprietary AI algorithms and machine learning models to deliver predictive insights. 

Challenges in fleet maintenance today

a. Fleet managers need the right data 

Today, fleet managers use a long stack of technologies to manage their business. Data from telematics devices, OEM proprietary tools, maintenance applications, ERP applications, and others. Fleet managers are going into multiple disparate systems, with different data sources and are collating this information to drive action within their business. 

This is overwhelming, ineffective, and often these systems are not utilized to their fullest. Fleet managers need access to the right data, not all the data. Predictive technologies leverage the underlying set of applications, providing accurate information to fleet managers for each asset. 

b. Lack of precision

Traditionally, fleet management and maintenance professionals have used industrial engineering practices to implement scheduled preventative maintenance of assets based on usage, wear, and specialization of the equipment. For fleets, it has always been odometer reading, engine hours, cost of assets relative to cohort, and other financial motivations. 

All of these practices are best guesses, OEM recommended, and lack precision. These practices often are costly and assets are either over or underserved.

c. Unscheduled maintenance 

Unscheduled maintenance is another line item in the finances of fleet operations. Unscheduled maintenance happens for a multitude of factors such as driver behaviour, OEM recalls, in-field failures, and others. 

By its nature, it’s unpredictable, unforeseen, and often costs more than the standard and preventative maintenance. Beyond parts and labour, there are additional costs that come from missed customer commitments, administering the failure and vehicle downtime. 

Solutions to the challenges in fleet maintenance today

The strategies to approach this problem will be categorized into three parts:

1. People 
2. Process
3. Technology 

Communication is critical for the success and adoption of any new technology or project for a business. For larger organizations, introduce and embed the project within the existing program management and project delivery framework to engage and involve stakeholders across the organization. For smaller organizations, a combination of scrum-like regimented communication channels can serve as the project management platform for all. 

By Rakean Zakir, Customer Success Lead @ Pitstop

Part 2: People and Process is now live! Continue reading here

Reach out to our experts to get started today: sales@pitstopconnect.com