Leveling Up: 5 Steps to Transform Your Maintenance Schedule Into a Maintenance Program

You know how important proper heavy equipment maintenance is, which is why you've put so much thought into developing your maintenance schedule. You have a thorough list of which activities will be performed on each vehicle in your fleet, and you know which technicians will perform them. But have you developed an equipment maintenance program to go with it?

Equipment maintenance programs go beyond maintenance schedules to include the "why" and "how" of all your maintenance workflows. They lay the foundation for your maintenance schedule and help ensure it all goes according to plan.

This article will show you how to build a heavy equipment maintenance program along with the benefits it brings to the table — and how RapidWorks can help you pull it off. We'll walk through:

• What Types of Maintenance Are There?
• What Is a Preventive Maintenance Program?
• Maintenance Program vs. Maintenance Schedule: Similarities and Differences
• 5 Steps to Building Your Maintenance Program
• How Enterprise Solutions Improve Equipment Maintenance Programs
• RapidWorks: Your Heavy Equipment Maintenance Solution 
  

What are the Maintenance Types?

Understanding the different types of maintenance is the first step toward keeping your fleet in good condition. Knowing what kind of maintenance your vehicles need helps you schedule your tasks at appropriate intervals to ensure all of your vehicles' components continue to work at their best. 

The two main types of maintenance are: 

• Corrective maintenance, which troubleshoots and repairs broken equipment
• Preventive maintenance, which takes proactive steps to keep equipment from being damaged at all 

While corrective maintenance will always be necessary as long as equipment breaks down, preventive maintenance keeps minor issues from compounding into bigger problems. The result is less downtime, lower repair costs, higher productivity, and a longer vehicle lifetime, which is why a preventive maintenance program is a must. 

What Is a Preventive Maintenance Program? 

A preventive maintenance program details all of the tasks required to keep your vehicle in top shape. It serves as the foundation for the rest of your maintenance workflows, listing what duties should be performed, along with when and how to best perform them.

The exact details of what should go into your preventive heavy equipment maintenance program will vary with your vehicles, industry, and other factors, but generally, it should contain:

• What: Specific maintenance tasks that should be performed 
• When: How often those tasks should performed
• Who: Which team members are responsible for completing each task
• Where: Which maintenance workflows can be performed in-house and which ones require external support
• How: Any instructions, manuals, or guidelines regarding best practices when performing maintenance tasks, along with the raw materials required to complete each task
• Why: Any educational materials clarifying the importance of each maintenance task

While details such as the "what" and "when" may be part of your maintenance schedule, a maintenance program goes beyond these to outline all workflows, as well as any resources and best practices required to complete them. 

Maintenance Program vs. Maintenance Schedule: Similarities and Differences

While there is some overlap between a maintenance program and a maintenance schedule, their benefits and applications may vary. For example, maintenance schedules help you keep track of when a maintenance task gets completed and who completes it, but they fail to provide the broader framework that keeps your operations running smoothly — and that’s where maintenance programs come in.

By providing clarity on how all maintenance workflows should be performed, maintenance programs go beyond simple schedules to ensure full compliance and greater efficiency while seeing to it that no task goes overlooked. Maintenance programs, therefore, offer the same benefits as maintenance schedules — they just provide greater detail, insight, and clarity. 

5 Steps to Building Your Maintenance Program 

Since heavy equipment maintenance programs are more detailed than maintenance schedules, it helps to take a strategic approach to building one. The exact details may vary according to the needs of your fleet, but a few steps to take as you build your heavy equipment maintenance program include:

1. Take an inventory. How many vehicles do you have in your fleet? How old are they? Do some components or vehicles seem to be wearing down? Which ones are used the most, and what maintenance tasks do they require? 
2. Consult resources. Many technical manuals and user guides have recommendations from the manufacturer on how frequently certain maintenance tasks must be performed, as well as how to best perform them. Consult these resources as you design your heavy equipment maintenance program.
3. Create workflows. Some preventive maintenance tasks must be performed every day before vehicles go into the field, while others should be performed monthly, quarterly, or after a certain amount of mileage. Identify which maintenance tasks are necessary for each vehicle, along with how often they should be performed. Then, make a list of all duties to be completed before your vehicle can enter the field — check out our heavy equipment maintenance workflow template to get started.
4. Develop a system. Even with your workflows in place, you'll still need some way to organize all of your maintenance tasks. Manual solutions such as whiteboards, checklists, or filing cabinets can quickly become disorganized, but heavy equipment maintenance software provides a centralized hub for all of your maintenance operations.
5. Assign tasks. Once you have a framework in place, you can assign specific maintenance duties to individual members of your team. Depending on your company's size, you may have a group of "yard boys" who are specifically responsible for maintenance, or you may assign some tasks to the operators themselves. 

Another key component of your heavy equipment maintenance program is keeping a record of all your maintenance tasks. Doing so will not only demonstrate your compliance in the event of an inspection or audit, but it will also assist you with warranty claims if your equipment were to break down.

How Enterprise Solutions Improve Equipment Maintenance Programs

With so many components, it can be difficult to orchestrate your heavy equipment maintenance program without the right tools in place. Enterprise software like Rapid Fleet lets you bring your maintenance program into the digital age, offering you greater insights, efficiency, and organization than paper processes ever could. 

Some advantages that heavy equipment maintenance software brings to the table include:

• Clearer insights: Heavy equipment maintenance software offers a clear interface demonstrating not only which maintenance tasks are due, but also how well your vehicle is performing. This data can provide actionable insights regarding the life of your vehicle, such as when to reduce its usage or remove it from service entirely.
• Greater efficiency: From automatically creating work orders to sending out maintenance reminders, heavy equipment maintenance software has multiple functionalities that can improve your team's efficiency. The result is a streamlined maintenance program, and more time for your fleet to be out in the field. 
• Improved accessibility: The reports that your heavy equipment maintenance software generates are easily accessible for technicians, managers, clients, and inspectors. This makes it easy to manage your maintenance workflows and to demonstrate your compliance as needed.

Creating maintenance plans, assigning tasks, generating reports — these are just a few components of a comprehensive maintenance program, and keeping track of them all can be time-consuming and costly. Heavy equipment maintenance software simplifies the process of managing your maintenance program so that your fleet stays up and running.

Pro tip: Heavy equipment maintenance software will help you manage your maintenance workflows and generate reports to prove your compliance, so invest in an enterprise solution like Rapid Fleet.

RapidWorks: Your Heavy Equipment Maintenance Solution 

A maintenance schedule is critical for coordinating essential tasks, but it won't be enough to keep your fleet in top shape. A maintenance program outlines the needs of each vehicle and helps you allocate your resources more efficiently, saving you time and money while maximizing the life of your fleet. 

RapidWorks provides the fleet management software you need to build and execute your maintenance program. Our maintenance solution, Rapid Fleet, lets you create workflows, manage tickets, assign tasks, and generate reports all from one centralized, user-friendly hub. 

The result is a well-oiled maintenance program that keeps your fleet out in the field and running at its best for longer. Schedule a demo today to see how we can help you.