Age, cost, and reliability are considerations that every equipment manager has to balance to find that “sweet spot” that determines whether to retire or continue to maintain a piece of equipment. Very few shops can afford to keep a fleet of newly minted equipment that requires a constant flow of new purchases to keep repair costs low. On the opposite spectrum, equipment managers also cannot maintain an aging fleet without considering the increasing cost of repairs and decreasing efficiency that happens over time. Most companies will want to keep a balance that respects the relationship between repair costs and reliability, but timing is key.

Tracking your costs, whether the equipment is in for preventative or damage work, and keeping an eye on its utilization in the field are things that Equipment360 has always kept track of for its users. This takes care of the day-to-day operations. Two reports that come with every Equipment360 install, Churn Chart and Reliability Report, will help you make ongoing and informed decisions on each equipment’s reliability, and give you the opportunity to forecast when it is time to replace equipment within the fleet while maximizing return, and extend the up-time for operations.

Churn Chart 

The churn chart is a forecasting tool of your fleet’s health so that you make informed replacement planning decisions. Your equipment is ranked according to its age as it relates to its expected life. If you have been to our User’s Group Meeting, Professor Mike Vorster’s class is one of popularity. His philosophy with balancing a fleet’s economic life explains that your strategy is an ongoing process. While age is not the only replacement criteria for the economic life of equipment, he does emphasize that if you can manage the age of your fleet right, the waste, inefficiency, and cost can be managed after.

In order for this chart to work properly, you must enter the replacement cycle, hours per year, and/or mi/km in the Equipment Detail for each piece of equipment. The reason for this is that economic life, as a general rule, states that hourly owning costs go down as the machine ages depending on the residual value of the machine and its age. Conversely, the hourly operating costs go up as the machine ages, as it depends on the rate of the labor and parts increasing as the machine ages. This balance of ownership and operating costs is what must be constantly looked after. By default, the Churn Chart groups equipment by type. This makes it easy to see the average age of a type of equipment, and the individual pieces that make up that group.

If an equipment type is aging, you can use that evidence to show that it may be time to start considering younger replacements to balance the fleet. If you have a mix of older and younger equipment, you can also extend the life of the aging equipment by utilizing some of the newer pieces more often. Let us know how you would use this information in your shop.

Green, yellow, and red colors are used as indicators to help you make decisions. Each color represents a decision zone. As each machine ages, they move to different decision zones. Green indicates the equipment is in top shape, and yellow indicates a point at which you should consider replacing it. The red indicates that the equipment is past its expected life, and should be replaced. The hours or distance per year value can be edited in the chart to recalculate the forecast for each piece of equipment. 

Reliability Report

The reliability report has two sections that answer different business questions.

The pie charts on top indicate overall trends in your fleet’s health. It provides answers to: “Is my preventative maintenance program aggressive enough?” and “Do we have an issue with a high rate of damage?”

This chart displays the percentages of equipment work orders and their hours that are planned (preventative maintenance) versus unplanned (non-PM). The results can be refined to separate out work orders that have been marked on a mechanic’s time card as “Damage” by checking the “Break Out WOs w/Damage” box in the Filter Options in the left sidebar.

The grid below the pie chart provides information specific to each piece of equipment including number of work order hours, type of work orders, and work order cost for each piece. Outliers in the data set are highlighted. In the Filter Options, this data can be restricted to a certain meter value to help normalize the results. Below the grid, the average of each column and standard deviation is provided as a summary. Double-clicking a row in the grid will jump to the maintenance history for that piece of equipment.

The grid information is useful to answer for each piece of equipment:

• Awareness – “Is preventative maintenance being performed on this piece of equipment?”
• Performance – “Are a lot of resources (hours, money) being spent to keep it running?”
• Reliability – “Is the machine down often being repaired?”

Do You Need Help?

If you need any assistance with these features, please do not hesitate to contact our fleet support at 855-231-7877 or fleetsupport@hcss.com.