One service level fits all
October 1st 2007

Ian Roberts, national support manager for Barloworld Handling, claims it now delivers uniform service support – whether the customer uses a single truck or a major fleet

Imagine buying a single fork lift truck for a small timber yard in John O'Groats and telling the supplier that you wanted the same level of service as a customer who operates 4,000. Is this a reasonable expectation? If you are a major user of FLTs would you expect a supplier to invest in a system that enabled you to operate at the same level of efficiency using a significantly smaller fleet and benefit from lower costs but reducing revenue to the supplier? You might think any supplier offering to fulfil any of the above conditions would be committing commercial suicide but the opposite is the case. Welcome to the future of fleet management.

Five years ago Barloworld Handling (BWH) decided to take a lead in improving the economics of fleet management for its customers. The company is the UK distributor for Hyster FLTs. It supports 7,500 customers operating around 30,000 trucks.

The company recognised the problems paper based systems were generating.

Engineers were encumbered with time sheets, parts orders, and other documents.

The system involved a lot of people, postage and filing. There was a lot of duplication and inaccuracies arose because of poor handwriting or interpretation.

Some processes required engineers to write down the same details as much as seven times due to the different types of repairs and components. Then in 2002 the company decided it was time to review its whole approach.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) The aim was to achieve a level of response that would enable customers to fulfil their KPIs with the minimum number of trucks.

We needed the ability to analyse FLT usage on customers' sites and to maintain real time awareness of support operations so that customers could do this without exposing themselves to unplanned downtime and then hiring additional trucks as and when needed to meet seasonal peaks in demand.

One of our KPIs was to achieve a consistency of service across the UK regardless of the size of the customer's fleet. This goal was made easier because as a sole UK distributor with a strong geographic network we did not have to work with third party dealers operating different business processes.

We needed to restructure our business processes so that we could operate in realtime and be seamlessly connected to our large mobile workforce. Agility in the field would be provided through wireless communications to engineers. Mobile Asset Management (MAM) technology would enable us to track our support engineers on the road. With these two capabilities we could then complete repairs within a single site visit most of the time and defuse any customer frustration if an unexpected delay arose by immediately informing them about our intended actions. A key challenge was to link the mobile solution loaded on to the engineers' PDAs and the existing SAP R3 management software.

Response infrastructure The field based operation consists of a National Support Centre in Abingdon Oxfordshire and six strategically located regional centres with workshops. The National Support Centre collates all breakdown calls from across the UK and feeds relevant information to the mobile field staff. Customers are given a call reference to enable them to track progress.

This reference also flags up a new job on the system at our Regional Centres enabling them to allocate the most appropriate engineer who is closest to the customer site. We can do this because we know every engineer's skills set.

Engineers receive all job details electronically through the PDA and can access technical information and order spare parts. Our vans are loaded with a scientifically compiled stock of spare parts and additional orders are delivered direct to our engineers overnight. All Engineer vans are fitted with a GPS tracking device. The combined technology tells us how long engineers have been on site and the type of repair being made.

Customer benefits The system empowers field staff to assess situations and make decisions to introduce more agility in the support process. The customer experiences shorter response times. Jobs are also signed off by the customer on the PDA who can also request relevant documentation if required.

Although five years in the planning, the new support infrastructure, in its fourth phase, has been running for over one year and shows that it is helping to drive down the overall cost of ownership for fleet operators – even someone operating a single truck in John O'Groats.

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