The challenge of travel costs and maintenance management
All industries that require the management of machinery maintenance face a significant challenge.
How can travel or displacement costs be controlled to make implementation or maintenance processes profitable?
Think about all the expenses this entails:
• Fuel costs
• Vehicle maintenance
• Resources and tools for maintenance operations
• Specific training for technicians
In many cases, you are not aware of all the expenses this can entail, as there are also variable costs that are not always controlled.
For example, when your team has to spend more time on the road than planned due to a traffic jam, or when the maintenance or machinery installation operation is extended due to an unforeseen event...
If you don't want the management of operators and travel expenses to become an unpredictable nightmare, take note of the guidelines we will give you in this post.
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Common risks in maintenance management and travel expenses
Many machinery manufacturers also provide machinery implementation and maintenance services in companies.
As we mentioned in a previous post, one of the challenges in maintenance management is improving efficiency.
Managing maintenance tasks involves the need for a technical support service that allows you to track all customers and their needs.
• Emergency repairs
• Installations
• Preventive maintenance tasks
To manage operations correctly and fulfill contracts, you must send operators to the locations where they need to perform the operations.
This involves a series of risks and difficulties that many manufacturers and industries offering technical machinery maintenance services must face.
1. Effective agenda management
Having a team in a mobile situation, traveling by road to factories or warehouses where they must perform operations, requires strict control of time and available resources.
You need to organize the schedule properly so that sending operators is productive and profitable. Otherwise, costs could skyrocket if you do not cover enough customers per day.
Ideally, you should plan routes to avoid traffic jams, send technicians who are closest to each customer, track vehicles by GPS...
There are SaaS technical support applications (for example, solutions like Appsat) that allow you to control operations.
2. Cost control
You must effectively measure the financial costs of each operation to maximize productivity and avoid situations where costs exceed revenues.
You must be able to measure and justify all expenses involved in each operation (fuel, meals, resources, and tools, etc.).
With expense management software, your company could centralize all costs derived from operations and apply the appropriate deductions in tax declarations.
Excessive costs in operations can be due to various causes:
❌ Poor organization and planning of trips
❌ Difficulties in managing installation/maintenance operations
❌ Poor management of the materials and resources needed to carry out operations
❌ Low productivity due to difficulty in managing technical operations
3. Productivity and operations management
The high costs of a maintenance management or new implementation operation are not only limited to travel.
Also, the time spent on the operations themselves.
The staff must have all the tools, materials, and resources to carry out maintenance operations without having to return.
On the other hand, it is ideal to have CMMS software or HR software that allows you to control technical operations and where a work report can be sent, with videos or photographs of the tasks performed.
You must also ensure that operations can be successfully completed, as if a specific task cannot be finished, a second appointment will have to be scheduled.
There may also be delays because operators have not finished the necessary tasks with a particular client.
Here, having a virtual industrial assistant like Uktena, where technicians can access accumulated knowledge about different technical tasks and what to do in each case, can be very helpful.
Moreover, the assistant can provide real-time information through Mixed Reality glasses, providing technicians with the advice they need to carry out tasks as efficiently and quickly as possible.
4. Technical staff training management
Can all your technical professionals cover any type of operation assigned to them? Do they have the same accumulated knowledge and experience to carry out operations even in the most difficult cases?
Although we would all like to answer these questions affirmatively, the reality is that in some cases, technical operations are not merely routine tasks, but involve greater difficulties and risks.
There are also different levels of risk to worker health, especially in maintenance operations at height or confined spaces.
Centralizing and accumulating company knowledge, derived from the various technical repair or maintenance operations performed, can help reduce accidents and ensure that all staff have the necessary knowledge and tools to do their job.
The best solution to control travel expenses and maintenance operations
It seems clear that what every industry that manages technical service tasks needs is effective communication.
There must be good communication between the headquarters and the technical teams on the move.
But there must also be adequate communication between members of the same team, who should, in turn, be able to access a common company knowledge base to provide an effective response to the various situations that may arise.
Beyond implementing SaaS solutions for maintenance management and travel cost control, a virtual industrial assistance solution with AI is key to ensuring perfect communication and coordination among your entire team.
We invite you to learn about our AI-powered industrial assistant solution to optimize your maintenance management processes, improve productivity, and thus optimize the costs of your trips.
Have you encountered these common problems in maintenance management?
