used. “It feeds that data back to the warehouse manager so he can make good decisions about equipment.”
The results of these studies sometimes
contain surprises. Aitcheson of Yale tells
of one customer, a manufacturer, that was
using one lift truck as a lift table. You may
find multiple trucks assigned to tasks
where one would do, or trucks that are
idle much of the time. And a careful sur-
vey may expose other facility issues. For
instance, a search for the root cause of
high tire expenditures might reveal flooring or dock or drain problems that
require attention.
Aitcheson notes that it’s important to
allow several weeks for the monitoring
process. He suggests conducting an evaluation over a 30- or 60-day period to get an
accurate picture of fleet operations.
Analyze this
It’s not enough to just collect operating
data; you have to analyze it as well. That
can be done a number of ways. For example, Raymond’s approach to analyzing fleet
utilization is to look at deadman hours per
day. A “deadman” is a safety device on all
modern lift trucks that must be engaged by
the operator for the vehicle to operate. It
might be the pedal in a lift truck or a handle on a pallet jack. “When the deadman is
engaged, the vehicle is doing work,”
LaFergola says. “In an eight-hour shift, that
can be anywhere from two to five hours.”
Bratton says that his company uses the
results of its fleet surveys to calculate each
truck’s cost per operational hour—
including maintenance costs. “We need to
get the information for a set period of
time,” Bratton says. BEB has developed
analytical software to help derive the cost
per hour for each piece of equipment in a
customer’s operations.
Hyster concentrates on usage patterns.
“We look at the inventory summary, the
department summary and we get to the
granular level,” says Russian. “Are trucks
used in shipping or receiving? Are they
used in freezer applications? Are they used
in production? We look for redeployment
or retirement opportunities. We look for
short-term rentals being used for long-term use, which is not advantageous.”
the payoff can be big. Bratton
reports that in his experience, fleet
utilization analyses almost invariably
reveal savings opportunities. “In
almost every case, we find there is
too much equipment,” he says. And
often, the trucks in the fleet are bigger than they need to be. That hap-
pens as DC operations change over
time, he explains. “DCs often buy a
forklift that’s just like the old forklift,
but the job has changed.”
What’s it all mean?
With detailed information on the
existing fleet in hand, the next step is
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