Importance of Inspection & Maintenance of your Heavy Equipment

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• Jan 20, 2020
• Kunal Desai

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Inspection & maintenance for your heavy equipment is seemingly straightforward and something you know you should be doing — yet it easily falls by the wayside.

Why is that? You hardly need reminders on the importance of preventative maintenance for your fleet, the security and profitability that comes with inspecting equipment, making preemptive adjustments and finding issues before system failures strike.

And you certainly don’t need to be told the cost-savings that come with proactive rather than reactive repairs — savings which start at lower operating costs and end with a higher resale rate.

With more and more companies moving towards to digital inspection & maintenance process has become very simple. Yet the value of inspection & maintenance for your heavy vehicle is twofold — the kinds that affect your wallet and the kinds that affect your brand. Inspection & maintenance is essential to establishing consistent protocols for protecting the performance and safety of your investment, yes — but it’s even more important to build your business legacy. These days neither can be neglected.

We at JRS Innovation have helped many mining, construction & oil and gas companies across the world in streamlining their digital journey.

IMPORTANCE OF Inspection & MAINTENANCE FOR HEAVY VEHICLES

Inspection & maintenance is more than caring for and managing your fleet.

These activities are fundamental, keeping your worksites efficient and your bottom lines under control. But when they aren’t backed by a complete understanding of the following, then their actions can’t help but turn empty.

1. INTEGRITY

Anyone interacting with your fleet and crew will know the gravity you place on doing things correctly at every stage, every day, not just when problems arise. It’s a commitment that goes a long way to those both inside and outside the industry, with integrity as the backbone to your fleet’s reputation.

2. SAFETY

Inspection and maintenance of equipment prioritize safety because they aren’t satisfied with the surface appearance of things. They dig deeper, identifying risks or inefficiencies before they turn into real safety hazards, improving end-to-end safety and making the conditions for everyone who sets foot on your worksites a priority.

3. BUSINESS SAVVY

Neglected equipment is more likely to be fuel inefficient, stall, stutter, overload or see entire system failures. This means unplanned downtime and scrambling to find and fix errant parts — which, in turn, means idle employees, halted production and hits to your bottom line that you may never recover.

When contracts aren’t followed, timelines fall behind or costs consistently balloon, you curate the impression this is just “business as usual” for you and your crew. Once this becomes associated with your reputation, good luck getting it to change.

No business owner, site manager or equipment operator wants to run their operations with so much risk and waste. It runs counter-intuitive to the business decisions so at the heart of the industry and the growth mindset it takes to succeed.

VALUE OF HVI INSPECTION & MAINTENANCE

Adopting a HVI preventative maintenance plan for your heavy equipment not only helps you with the intrinsic values described above. It carries serious bang for your buck.

That’s because the monetary value of inspection & maintenance comes down to operating costs — how it affects them, preempts them, informs them and ultimately reduces them. See for yourself the numbers-backed relationship between maintenance plans and operating costs in step-by-step detail below.

1. OVERALL COST OF HEAVY EQUIPMENT

The following values are used to calculate the actual operating cost of heavy equipment, both for their annual, cumulative rates or if looking to budget costs by the hour:

Cost of labor, most pressingly operator wages and benefits.

Costs of specialty labor, typically in the form of additional operating or maintenance professionals needed throughout equipment lifespans.

Inevitable replacement part cost estimates, from smaller components like filters and belts to more substantial costs like routine tire replacements that average nearly $10,000 per swap.

Servicing cost estimates, from preventative maintenance plans to situation-ally hired help, like lube trucks, brought on to service or conduct part replacements.

Operating necessities, most notoriously fuel costs and lubricant costs but also variables like transportation and storing the equipment when not in use.

Cost of use, from hours in operation to salvage value years down the road. These are the final variables used to conduct the actual cost-value analysis of owning a piece of equipment.

Overall, the cost of owning and operating heavy equipment is substantial. Conservative estimates put fixed cost figures between $25,000 and $35,000 annually depending on the type of equipment, while others can run upwards of $80,000.

2. REPAIR COSTS OF HEAVY EQUIPMENT

Repair costs are those accrued from unexpected equipment breakdowns. They can affect single components like an injector or — worst-case scenario — lead to complete and exorbitant system failures.

Repair idle times: Research from Caterpillar found that repair idle times range between 400 and 800 nonproductive hours per machine per year.

Repair costs: Repair costs average $1,560 up to $3,120 per year just to replace the defective component.

Repair costs and profit: Just a one percent drop in equipment productivity can cause a 2.75 percent drop in total project profits.

Repair costs are not factored into the fixed operating cost estimates above. The reason for this is intuitive — there’s simply no way to predict these breakdowns ahead of time — that is, no way without a preventative maintenance plan.

3. BOTTOM LINE: HVI Software Inspection & Maintenance COSTS VS. REPAIRS OF HEAVY EQUIPMENT

Inspection & maintenance are the fundamental way to address all the equipment expenses described above — both fixed operating estimates and repair costs.

In fact, studies have found that in total, scheduled inspection & maintenance — like those with repairs and unplanned servicing expenses — cost businesses three to four times more than the average preventative maintenance plan. That alone makes these plans worth their salt.

Still not convinced? Consider how inspection & maintenance targets nearly every operational variable, risk and cost involved in owning heavy equipment:

It reduces both the rate and costs of major repairs, therefore decreasing equipment downtime and employee idleness.

It reduces the use of specialty or situational labor, especially those which cost overtime.

It decreases the chance of premature machinery replacements and balances 50/50 repair vs replace rule in favor of more cost-effective, economic rebuilds.

It analyzes fuel efficiency and usage so you can set more informed fueling and fluid schedules.

It increases the lifespan and salvage value of machines.

It reduces the overall operating cost of heavy equipment.

RISKS OF NOT PRACTICING INSPECTION ON YOUR EQUIPMENT

Daily operating Inspection is an investment. A little today goes a long way tomorrow, with plans translating into a leaner business budget and improved resource allocation backed by tangible costs-savings, not just feel-good practices you don’t know are paying off. In other words, the money you put in it today will see its value compounded tomorrow to mitigate the following concerns:

We at JRS Innovation is committed to provide you one central system which will integrate your daily operator reporting, Preventive & scheduled inspections & maintenance work flows, fluids analytics, tier monitoring, fuel bunker integration & integration to your IOT devices.

Contact us for free consultation to discuss your mining & construction challenges.

• Inspection
• Maintenance
• PM Scheduling
• Daily Operator Reporting
• Audit Checklist Manager
• Other Features