Fleet maintenance analysis: how to do it and what to measure

Ideally, maintenance processes and routines should bring greater transport safety, resource savings and operational efficiency. To assess these results, you should apply fleet maintenance analysis.

This assessment process takes place within the fleet maintenance management department to understand which activities are performed, what the maintenance routine is like and how effective current actions are.

Today, using data in fleet management is no longer just a novelty, but an obligation for managers seeking to achieve their goals and generate more positive results in their operations.

See below:

• What fleet maintenance analysis is;
• How to perform fleet maintenance analysis;
• Best practices in fleet maintenance analysis.

What is fleet maintenance analysis?

Fleet maintenance analysis is the process of bringing your fleet data together and interpreting it to gain management insights, identifying both problems and opportunities for improvement.

This analysis is essential to achieving the best results in fleet maintenance, grounded in a data-driven management strategy.

After all, analyzing concrete, real data about how your operation works is the most accurate way to understand your fleet’s needs. In maintenance, it is possible to forecast failures, understand problem trends and identify performance patterns by vehicle.

Decisions and the implementation of corrective actions are most effective when data is used in the smartest way: in fleet analysis.

How do you perform fleet maintenance analysis?

Set a goal for your analysis

To start, define the goal of your analysis. If the fleet needs to reduce preventive maintenance or corrective maintenance costs, one line of analysis is needed. On the other hand, if the goal is to analyze which vehicles should be renewed, your analysis will take a different path.

Once the goal is defined, move on to the next steps.

Collect and store data

Beyond having the right tools to collect and store fleet maintenance data, you should also ensure that this data is constantly updated. This can be done with digital and automated tools, as well as by training employees to use them in the same way.

Organizing this data into reports is also essential. Although maintenance systems generally have this feature, you can also have ready-made report templates to fill in as you collect data.

Use maintenance indicators

When managing fleet maintenance, you need to identify which metrics and indicators to keep track of and measure the results of your actions. These KPIs allow you to perform fleet maintenance analysis.

Maintenance indicators can include:

• Mean time between failures (MTBF);
• Mean time to repair (MTTR);
• Vehicle availability;
• Number of corrective maintenance jobs;
• Maintenance cost;
• Number of services by maintenance type;
• Among others.

Using this information, you can assess which vehicles have above-average costs by analyzing cost, and also understand why by using MTBF and the number of services by maintenance type.

If you have not yet carried out this process in your maintenance planning, determine as soon as possible which indicators you need to record and analyze in your management.

Best practices in fleet maintenance analysis

Identify trends and patterns

As you identify a goal for fleet maintenance analysis, you will also know where to assess trends and patterns. For example, a manager seeking to reduce corrective maintenance should identify:

• Main corrective services;
• The vehicle model that generates the highest corrective service costs;
• Incidence of corrective services by driver;
• Number of corrective services (total and per vehicle);
• Average time between corrective services (per vehicle).

For each situation, indicators and analyses should be adapted so the analysis makes sense and you reach conclusions that bring real improvements.

Analyze maintenance costs

Reducing maintenance costs is a constant goal for managers because these costs tend to be quite high in transport operations. That is why keeping track of them and identifying their details is an essential task.

Knowing the amount allocated according to the maintenance type and service performed is just as important as having a total amount allocated to maintenance at the end of the month.

This breakdown will allow you to seek solutions so costs are actually reduced.

Have defined processes

Any management benefits from implementing processes. The best results emerge through standardizing routine activities in each fleet department.

In fleet maintenance analysis, data needs to be collected at the right frequency and organized correctly. Otherwise, it can generate more problems in the fleet instead of the solutions it should provide.

Each process should be documented and followed consistently, involving all relevant parties in fleet maintenance, such as drivers, technicians and mechanics.

Collect data digitally

For greater accuracy and fewer headaches in your analyses, digital tools may be the best choice. When taking readings and entering data manually, the chance of errors is higher.

That is why systems and online platforms are gaining more and more ground in fleet management. Ensuring data integrity and quality is essential for accurate, effective analysis.

Discover a solution focused on maintenance management to optimize and perform your fleet maintenance analysis. Schedule a demonstration free of charge.