Russell Wells, Vice President of Business Development at Kenco – Material handling equipment: these assets are the workhorse of your facilities, but they don’t often get the attention they deserve – at least, when they’re functioning properly.
Material handling equipment: these assets are the workhorse of your facilities, but they don’t often get the attention they deserve – at least, when they’re functioning properly. As soon as they break, they’ll bring your facility to a screeching halt. Unfortunately, you don’t always have the resources to dedicate a team entirely to maintaining MHE assets. You’ll need to think strategically about how you manage MHE to keep your facility running like clockwork, while keeping your eye on the bigger picture.
Kenco COO David Caines and I recently discussed the keys to successful MHE maintenance during a LinkedIn Live webinar. Here are a few of David’s insights:
Don’t get hung up on brand
When you need assurance your MHE will work no matter what, there’s comfort in choosing a big brand name. After all, it takes years of proven success to build a brand, so there’s implicit peace-of-mind in partnering with a leader. There’s also a high price tag, however, so it’s important to scrutinize every piece of MHE that might enter your facility.
Instead of defaulting to the industry leader, look beyond the brand to how the equipment will interact with your other assets. Operational consistency is the goal. Use your own success stories from other facilities to understand what brands and what types of equipment mix and match well, and work with each vendor to understand how their assets will streamline your unique processes. Once you achieve consistency from facility to facility, you’ll also have the freedom to move equipment between facilities as demand increases and decreases.
Finally, no matter which brand you work with, consider working with a vendor-neutral maintenance team to avoid the politics and headaches of managing a different contact for each brand.
Make every decision with productivity in mind
Supply chain professionals are tasked daily with moving goods as quickly as possible, with as few resources as possible. Still, if that means cutting operational corners, the long-term costs could far outweigh the short-term benefits. If, for instance, you choose the cheapest lithium battery possible for your forklifts, you might see immediate cost savings – but if the batteries malfunction and damage the equipment, you’ll have to buy an entirely new asset much earlier than necessary.
Before you make any decisions around purchasing or repairing MHE, be sure to center productivity in the conversation. Take the time to understand the asset’s historical uptime, and how much every minute of downtime could cost you, when comparing two vendors. Once you purchase an asset, confirm you understand the potential risks of conducting maintenance with non-vendor-approved parts. And don’t be afraid to seek out third-party advice if you need help comparing the potential productivity gains of different assets before making a purchase.
Watch your data closely
As your MHE goes through its daily paces, one of your jobs is to keep tabs on all operational data – remaining cycle life, health & safety concerns, uptime & downtime. But there are other data-driven activities that, if not actively monitored, can cause unexpected costs. Take your MHE lease, for example. Running your asset over the number of hours specified in your contract will lead to a jaw-dropping extra charge at lease end. Of course, staying within the lease’s boundaries also requires detailed scheduling for when to swap assets out during normal operations – another source of data you must monitor.
Tracking all this data is a juggling act, one that takes away from time your team could spend on revenue-generating projects. Consider investing in software that can help you manage all these data streams to ensure you are not getting overcharged, and that you are keeping maintenance schedules on track.
You can also work with a third party that can manage your data and complete ongoing MHE maintenance for you – keeping your assets on track without consuming your tight resources.
Lift the burden of day-to-day maintenance
As part of our Kenco MHE Solutions suite, Kenco offers an Onsite Support solution to take much of your daily asset management off your hands. We’ll place an expert MHE technician in your facilities, ensuring your assets undergo routine maintenance on time and getting your equipment fixed quickly no matter the brand. And because we have decades of experience working with a wide variety of MHE vendors, we can help you make the right decisions for your facility’s needs when it comes time to purchase new assets.
For the full details on our Onsite Support solution, check out the Kenco MHE Solutions website. You can also watch the full replay of my conversation with David Caines here.