february2023 - 21

[ DATA & TELEMATICS ]
P
You don't need a
crystal ball to avoid
breakdowns and
costly repairs when
you have data and a
scalable predictive
maintenance solution.
By John Hitch
itstop founder and CEO Shiva Bhardwaj, like
many forward-thinking leaders, believes the
future success of the transportation industry
lies with predictive maintenance. And for good
reason. A maintenance operation that leverages
the burgeoning software tool, which prioritizes
an asset's diagnostic trouble codes based
on historical data and sends alerts to decision
makers, knows where to focus their efforts with
a high degree of certainty.
Current predictive maintenance solutions like
Pitstop's platform can help fleets avoid unscheduled
vehicle downtime by creating a vehicle health
profile based on received diagnostic trouble codes
and using data analytics to measure that against
historical data.
" Our step-by-step process identifies issues, and
then confirms how serious they are, and then you
schedule vehicles in for service, " Bhardwaj said.
" This is how we're able to reduce downtime. "
And this is enabled by the multiple outputs,
including sensors, ECUs, telematics, and maintenance
management systems. The more data
plugged into the algorithms, the more accurate
the analysis.
" Any asset is spitting off a lot of info, telematics,
and service data, and your mechanics, external
or internal, are recording a lot of information
about how they're fixing these assets, " Bhardwaj
explained. " When you bring these things together,
you can make some smart decisions. "
With this newfound power to see the future,
you can also succumb to the dreaded data overload,
where too much of a good thing renders you
directionless.
Bhardwaj has been told by customers that
receiving all these fault codes " was too much, " so
they stopped looking altogether.
" The key is not overwhelming with warnings, "
he said, explaining that Pitstop " cuts through the
noise " by providing, for example, three action
items to address per week. " It's not about putting
more alerts in your hand, it's about putting only
the things that matter, " he said.
Because of its wide-ranging potential, it's possible
predictive maintenance will someday be as
common as preventive maintenance or replace
it altogether. While some fleets are already on
that journey, others might be holding off, waiting
for more data and certainty. The future is never
100% certain, but fleets that embrace predictive
sooner rather than later will have an easier time
once they get there, based on the sage advice Fleet
Maintenance has gathered from several trailblazers
in the space.
And their advice will hopefully enable maintenance
departments to make the smartest decisions
on how to proceed-decisions that could end
up saving an operation a fortune.
John Hitch | Fleet Maintenance
How predictive works
First off, it's best to explain what predictive maintenance
is and what it isn't.
" The definition of predictive maintenance is
that you're using historical data to project what
February 2023 | FleetMaintenance.com
21
http://www.FleetMaintenance.com
february2023

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