Most people have heard the old saying: “It’s better to do it right than do it over.” That’s the essence of getting to the root cause of a vehicle problem or breakdown. If you don’t understand the root cause you aren’t fixing the problem, you’re fixing the symptom.
In a perfect world, you find the root cause right away. But in reality, you sometimes end up fixing the symptom more than once before you identify the real root cause. That’s okay. Sometimes identifying the root cause through repetitive symptom repair is the only way to find it.
In either case, what’s the fastest path to identification of root cause, and what best practices and software tools can help?
One tool that most fleets have is a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS). You can leverage a CMMS to get to the root cause of breakdowns in lots of ways, but they all require good use of your system. Industry experts with Dossier Systems recommend using the VMRS (Vehicle Maintenance Reporting Standards) coding system – the standard universal language for service event and asset maintenance.
Good use of a VMRS-enabled CMMS can help you identify and understand the root causes of failures. That is key, because you can’t fix what you don’t know. It goes back to Fleet Maintenance Magazine's process mantra: Measure, Analyze, Improve. You aren’t likely to improve (reduce breakdowns) if you don’t know the cause.
Breakdown Avoidance
Before we get into problem resolution, don’t forget the best solution: problem avoidance. Fixing a breakdown typically costs four times as much as the preventive maintenance that could have averted the breakdown in the first place, and that doesn’t include the collateral costs of overtime, customer satisfaction, etc.
Good fleet maintenance systems will track your preventive maintenance (PM) on-time performance and give you scorecards, dashboards and reports of results.
Do you have good practices in place to make sure all PMs are getting done when they are supposed to be done? If you do, you won’t be surprised to learn that your units and shops with the worst PM compliance scores are the same ones with high breakdown rates.
If you have onboard telematics, take advantage of your diagnostic trouble code (DTC) data if your maintenance system has an interface. Dossier’s On-Board function, by way of example, automatically creates a Work Pending (work request) item when a DTC is received. These DTC messages can help alert you to a larger or upcoming problem, as well as to a situation needing immediate
attention.
Do modern power units throw a lot of these errors? Yes. Is it worth it to deal with this data anyway? Absolutely. For example, Dossier allows individual DTCs to be hidden – they are still recorded but won’t clutter your maintenance dashboard.
Invest a few months to “train” your system on which codes are noise or nuisance. When that process is complete, almost all of the automatically generated work request items will be meaningful, and will be a huge time saver and early problem detector.
Identify Root Cause in the Shop
The next best thing to avoiding a problem is finding the root cause as early as possible. Having your technicians using your CMMS in the shop is a huge plus in this area because that system puts all of maintenance history for your assets at the technician’s fingertips.
One of the key indicators that you are fixing a symptom and not the root cause is repetitive repairs. Think of the benefits of access to that repair history information while the unit is still in the shop.
As an example, Dossier’s Instant Recall feature automatically opens a side panel whenever a new Repair Order is created or opened for a unit. The feature shows all of the “recent” repairs for that unit, and you can set what the definition of “recent” is.
This feature follows the technician as the repair get more defined. For example, if he/she is going to work on brakes, it switches to the most recent brake repairs, making repetitive repairs easy to spot.
It’s also good practice to leverage the experience of your technicians. Many shops use their journeyman technicians to do the inspection checks on PMs. They have the experience to spot a wear pattern or other sign that something needs attention. A preemptive repair is a lot less expensive than a breakdown.
Identify Root Cause through Analysis
Not everything can be detected in the shop, and not all shops have technicians live on their CMMS. Nevertheless, your CMMS is still a valuable tool in the identification of root cause of failures. Using the data and tools in your system, you can detect repair patterns, high cost units, premature part failures, etc.
For example, assets with above average maintenance/operational costs are showing a telltale sign that you may not be getting to the root cause of one or more issues. Dossier has Life-Cycle reports that calculate the average maintenance cost of a class of assets and then identify the most costly, at whatever threshold percent you set.
In some cases, what you are looking for may not be related a particular asset, such as a batch of parts that is failing prematurely. In situations like these, having a deep library of reports with limitless selection options helps get past the symptoms and to the cause.
A secondary benefit of your CMMS is that if you identify a systemic issue that impacts a number of units, you can create a campaign to automatically assign that repair job to all impacted units.
Put CMMS to Work
Whether you use it for prevention, early detection, detection by analysis or all three, put your Computerized Maintenance Management System to work. It can be a huge help in uncovering root cause issues.
If you solve those, you will be rewarded with fewer breakdowns, less unplanned downtime and higher customer and employee satisfaction.
Bob Hausler is the vice president of marketing and technology for Dossier Systems (www.dossiersystemsinc.com). The company is a pioneer and leading provider of intuitive fleet maintenance management software solutions for the surface transportation industry.
