DOT Boosts Accountability, Reduces Labor with New Tool
Published in: Better Roads
Date: 6/1/2008
By: Kerry L. Clines
The Michigan Department of Transportation is responsible for maintaining 27,345 lane-miles of highway system, despite limited resources and staff cuts. There are ten maintenance garages in the southwest region of the state. One of the largest, based in Paw Paw, serves a nine-county area that arguably faces the greatest operational challenges due to months of active winter weather.
Mark Lester is the Regional Fleet Manager for the southwest region. His operation encompasses 12 fully staffed garages that together maintain a fleet of 120 plow trucks, 60 light- and medium-duty dump trucks, graders, backhoes, pickups, and tractors.
In 2000, two drivers at Lesters South Haven garage suggested a technology they believed could automate the task of manually retrieving hours and miles from individual equipment. The technology, trade-named Service Tracker, had recently been commercialized by OEM Data Delivery, Shelton, Connecticut.
“At that time,” says Lester, “we had to manually retrieve hours and miles from equipment and put them in an Excel spreadsheet every two weeks, to see if and when services were due. Aside from the hazard of climbing into cabs in the pre-dawn hours, it took time – lots of it. By our calculations, 2 hours every other week per location, times 26 weeks, at an average total cost of $40 per hour, per employee.”
The Service Tracker system, by contrast, accomplishes this task electronically. Data is captured automatically on PDAs, which are beamed at each piece of equipment in the yard or garage biweekly. Data is encrypted, transmitted to a secure data vault, and made available to management via password-protected Web reports. “So, instead of spread sheets,” says Lester, “I access information online and export it into any other form I want. The process is easier, man-hours are fewer, and theres less error. Plus, we have more options for reports. I can see a service due report on-demand, rather than looking at every piece of equipment.”
In addition to essential data, OEMDD offers comprehensive report analysis weekly or monthly. Lester can run a report showing what services are due in the next 40 hours (or any other hour variant). “This feature allows maintenance groups to plan ahead for the downtime of particular machines, knowing in advance what will be required for that service,” he says.
Service histories with detailed mechanic notations can also be generated with the system, allowing fleet owners to see immediately where the problems are. “Look-back reports flag the equipment units that demand the most maintenance, so good decisions can be made about repair or replacement,” explains Lester.
Lester implemented the Service Tracker system all at once, without burdening the states IT department. Installs – a total of 430 – were done by MDOT service personnel as a part of normally scheduled maintenance. Roll-out was accomplished at all sites within 30 days. “When we discuss this concept with other divisions, we emphasize the very real ergonomic advantage of the system, along with the man-hour savings. The system gave us a fast return on our investment, too. OEM did the training, and returned for a second session to make certain we were getting full benefit from all of the features.”
Selling the idea to Michigans Department of Information Technology was not easy, either. “How do you quantify better ergonomics, and fewer errors? You cant, but dollars-and-cents savings in man-hours are easy to understand,” says Lester.
Service Trackers have now passed their third anniversary at MDOT installations, with no issues, according to Lester. Software updates, such as a new PRC for the PDAs, are made periodically, he says, “and these arrive via an internet reporting feature.” Additional costs-saving modules to the OEMDD system, including fuel tracking and the automating of inspections, are now under consideration.