Preparing for Maintenance with Pitstop's Vehicle Health Reports

When a driver reports an issue with their vehicle on the road, whether it’s due to a broken headlight or an uncomfortable driver seat. The driver calls the fleet manager or shop coordinator, and the vehicle gets brought in to fix the issue and sent back on the road the next day. Within the next two weeks, the vehicle suddenly experiences an engine derate and is inoperable to finish the route. This was the reality for many fleet customers when they came to Pitstop and ran the analysis on work order data. 

Due to the disorganized nature of maintenance, there is a lack of process in the shop when a vehicle is brought in for service. The vehicle may only get fixed for the problem it came in for but other important issues will get overlooked. So going back to the example of the broken headlight or seat, the driver may forget to mention the engine light turned on in the dashboard. This is an easy miss without the proper tools to oversee all vehicle issues remotely. 

We’re also seeing that shops do not have enough scan tools to plug into all the vehicles in the bay. So it takes a lot of time and effort to plug in the scan tool and try to diagnose the issue for every visit.

That’s where Pitstop’s comprehensive Vehicle Health Reports come in. 

In our latest update, we have further improved our existing vehicle health report functionality and made it even more comprehensive! Now containing a dynamic list of issues and diagnosis details created for individual assets, the vehicle health report shows all the known issues on the vehicle and compiles them together in one place with details on the:

• Prioritized list of fault codes, description, and explanation
• Driver vehicle inspection reports & complaints
• Next due routine service

The fleet manager can quickly print out or share the report with the mechanic or shop foreman to help prep the vehicle for the bay. This report is to be used alongside the work order to help standardize training across the shop and provide consistent quality repairs.

These vehicle health reports are now an integral part of Pitstop’s customer maintenance workflow. With consistent daily use, the shop coordinator or manager will print out the vehicle health report as soon as they know that the vehicle will be coming in for service. This report is handed out to the mechanic who then makes sure that all the higher priority items on the report are addressed before the vehicle leaves the shop. 

Some of the benefits experienced by users of the vehicle health report are:

• Easy to use – it only takes two clicks to share the vehicle health report as it’s directly embedded on the vehicle table which can be done by a tablet or desktop. 
• Makes the mechanic more efficient and has the parts ready before the vehicle comes into the shop. Mechanics know what to expect and can manage their time better when the vehicle is pulled into the shop. 
• Reduces the number of breakdowns and improves the quality of repair which will help in reducing the number of repeated shop visits and overall downtime.
• Improves communication between the shop coordinator and mechanic since now all the issues are listed in one place, pulling real-time maintenance data through our telematics API integrations as well as Pitstop’s predictive issues. The report is a dynamic checklist as it is unique to the asset at hand.

In the future, Pitstop plans to include recall and open work order information in the Vehicle Health Reports to improve overall visibility in the maintenance workflow. Stay tuned for our upcoming product announcements!

Want to see these features in action? Reach out to sales@pitstopconnect.com or book a demo.

About the Author

Vedant Khattar is the Chief Technology Officer for Pitstop, a powerful predictive maintenance software for the transportation and automotive industry.

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