How To
Identify The Root Cause
AUGUST 2017 | VehicleServicePros.com 11
Of Breakdowns
By Bob Hausler, Vice President, Marketing
& Technology, Dossier Systems
Leverage Your
Computerized Maintenance
Management System
any people have heard the old saying:
“It’s better to do it right than do it over.”
Th at’s the essence of getting to the root
cause of a vehicle problem or breakdown.
If you don’t understand the root
cause you aren’t fi xing the problem,
you’re fi xing the symptom.
In a perfect world, you fi nd the root cause right
away. But in reality, you sometimes end up fi xing
the symptom more than once before you identify
the real root cause. Th at’s okay. Sometimes
identifying the root cause through repetitive
symptom repair is the only way to fi nd it.
In either case, what’s the fastest path to identifi
cation of root cause, and what best practices
and soft ware tools can help?
One tool that most fl eets have is a Computerized
Maintenance Management System (CMMS). You
can leverage a CMMS to get to
the root cause of breakdowns in
lots of ways, but they all require
good use of your system.
Industry experts with Dossier
Systems recommend using the
VMRS (Vehicle Maintenance
Reporting Standards) coding
system – the standard universal
language for service event
and asset maintenance.
Good use of a VMRSenabled
CMMS can help you
identify and understand the
root causes of failures. Th at
is key, because you can’t fi x
what you don’t know. It goes
back to Fleet Maintenance Magazine’s process
mantra: Measure, Analyze, Improve. You aren’t
likely to improve (reduce breakdowns) if you
don’t know the cause.
Breakdown Avoidance
Before we get into problem resolution, don’t
forget the best solution: problem avoidance.
Fixing a breakdown typically costs four times as
much as the preventive maintenance that could
have averted the breakdown in the fi rst place,
and that doesn’t include the collateral costs of
overtime, customer satisfaction, etc.
Good fl eet maintenance systems will track
your preventive maintenance (PM) on-time
M
Page 12
» Computerized
Maintenance
Management Systems
can be a huge help
in uncovering the
root cause of a
vehicle problem or
breakdown. Then, by
adequately addressing
this, a recurrence of
that problem can
be prevented. This
helps eliminate
unplanned downtime.
Photo courtesy of Rush Truck Centers
» Good fleet maintenance systems will track preventive maintenance on-time
performance and give scorecards, dashboards and reports of the results. This
helps make sure all PMs are getting done when they are supposed to be done.
Graphic courtesy of Dossier Systems