Why Connected Maintenance is Important in the Supply Chain

In any supply chain business, you need to deliver your goods on time to keep your business afloat and fulfil orders efficiently. Vehicle maintenance plays an important role in this process. 

Your vehicles need to be healthy, maintained, and roadworthy, so you limit unexpected downtime and can meet the demands of customers timeously. Also, to ensure that your drivers can continue working and getting paid. We cannot look at maintenance tasks in isolation, but rather as connected parts that make up a well-oiled maintenance strategy.

If you have a fleet in a fast-moving supply chain, it’s no question that a maintenance plan should be a top priority. 

A 4PL provider helps you connect the dots in your maintenance process, so let’s look at how: 

Perform preventative maintenance

Also known as planned maintenance, PM involves scheduling regular vehicle services and repairs. This allows you to fix things before they break or prevent costly unexpected failures and so you can increase the longevity of your assets. With a 4PL logistics solution, you can create periodic maintenance workflows and perform maintenance on your assets at regular time intervals throughout the year. Or create workflows to maintain specific parts, such as filter components, pressure, temperature gauges, brakes, tyres, and much more – to address specific malfunctions. You’ll receive maintenance alerts for extra convenience, so you can fix parts or service your fleet on time.  

Digitise and optimise workshop processes

A 4PL platform lets you easily automate and streamline the repairs and activities in your workshop in many ways. You’ll get a progress overview of maintenance tasks, accessible from anywhere, and at any time. Your team members can join the workshops remotely, which will create more diverse and active participation, and will make maintenance more efficient and productive. Also, receive automatic alerts for the repair maintenance cycle of each vehicle, so you know when repairs are complete or if there are delays – you can arrange replacement vehicles to avoid downtime in the supply chain. Workshop attendance can also be tracked and automated, where working hours can be recorded on the platform, allowing you to accurately pay wages, streamline HR activities and assess staff productivity. 

Receive efficient workshop reports 

Get all types of reports to maintain your workshop effectively and assess maintenance procedures. For example, get reports on parts, inventory, and maintenance history so you can make better buying decisions or see what part of your maintenance plan isn’t working. Pull up reports to monitor the activities in your workshop and identify areas for improvement. In this case, you can make informed decisions about when to retire or replace vehicles, or how to optimise maintenance schedules to reduce costs and maximise uptime. Another example is to perform daily truck inspections, and record findings on the platform. Then, get a full history of all repairs, maintenance, and parts used per truck.

Save on costs 

Not only can you use a 4PL to save on operational costs by optimising maintenance processes and eliminating areas costing your business, but you can save in other ways. If you regularly monitor your tyres, for example, it helps improve their lifespan and your fleet’s fuel efficiency, saving you money. Fuel expenditure can represent up to 60% of a fleet’s operating budget, all the more reason to keep your fleet healthy, to cut back on fuel costs. 

Ready to maintain your vehicles effectively? Ready to save? Look no further than INControl’s 4PL logistics solution. 

Check out our Supply Chain (4PL) module!