Talley's Limited Ashburton is set to save up to $100,000 NZD on annual maintenance costs for their forklift fleet. By simply using telematics and Unknot to connect their forklift fleet to their CMMS, Talley's is on track to save at least a third of its annual maintenance expenses.
Story
The Talleys Ashburton site processes vegetables, quick frozen for local and overseas consumers. The CMMS used for all maintenance functions is UpKeep.
Many forklifts are used daily to move product and materials between different
locations. Maintaining a forklift fleet is tedious, and therefore often outsourced to service providers.
By simply using Unknot to connect their fleet of 29 electric and diesel forklifts to UpKeep CMMS, Talley’s Limited Ashburton will save a third of their annual maintenance expenses, WHILE optimising uptime, improving reliability, and increasing the safety of their operators!
Challenge
Talley’s Limited Ashburton contacted Unknot in order to resolve the following issues, which you can certainly relate to:
Reactive maintenance: An average of 12 reactive maintenance requests for forklifts are raised in UpKeep - This directly translates to $1,260 of reactive maintenance work that could be saved every month.
Forklifts were maintained based on a Calendar Plan. Talley’s maintained the forklifts on a monthly basis despite different individual usage, as a result:
38% of PMs were unnecessary
$320 were wasted in preventive maintenance per forklift each month
69 hours average service interval (recommended service interval is 250 hours)
Forklift usage was monitored manually. Too much time was spent to find forklifts in the plant and get meters data. Most process steps relied on user input:
Which forklift is due for a service?
What’s the runtime?
Which forklift should be used first?
Work orders were randomly created manually: Maintenance data was not 100% collected into the CMMS and analytics were not set up.
Solution
In order to counter maintenance and safety issues related to the use of a fleet of mobile forklifts, the solution was to install individual edge fleet trackers. Using the data from these devices, Unknot brought live reports and alerts on a "platter". Furthermore, Unknot delivered preventive maintenance plans based on the use of equipment, GPS tracking (including collision monitoring and geofencing), and finally an overview of the entire fleet.
Using telematics to enable preventive maintenance by having an edge fleet tracker installed on each mobile asset, Unknot enables real time monitoring and automated action triggers based on uptime, cycles count, collision detection, location, speed, sensor readings, and much more...
UpKeep integrates seamlessly to Unknot web platform, enabling machines’ data to become trusted decision makers through preventive and reactive work orders.
The overall installation is quick, super easy and requires no training. Edge fleet trackers were supplied by Unknot and installed by a certified local electrician. Asset registrations were made by the UpKeep user following the instructions of Unknot.
Tracker installation and operation
The installation is simple and can be done by a technician following Unknot’s user friendly procedure.
UpKeep registration: The registration consists in simply adding the tracker’s identification number against the asset in UpKeep.
Data communication: The tracker communicates in real time with Unknot using the 4G cellular network, or available network, ensuring reliable data processing every 24 hours (or more if required).
Unknot Platform: The Unknot environment and dashboard are created and configured by Unknot at no extra cost.
CMMS integration and operation
The integration to UpKeep CMMS is already built-in to Unknot. The preventive maintenance intervals and reactive maintenance triggers are defined on UnknotT’s platform.
The meters and preventive maintenance schedule are updated once a day in UpKeep, and pre-defined condition based maintenance is triggered when an event occurs.
UpKeep connected meters
Unknot allows pre-existing meters to be connected and receive reading from the trackers, and when those aren’t already set up in UpKeep, they can be created directly from Unknot.
Improved preventive maintenance work orders
Preventive maintenance work orders are updated with predefined maintenance intervals from Unknot. In the past, Talley’s Limited Ashburton had to write down the next service level on the forklift’s service sticker but the information wasn’t available to all stakeholders.
Now, everyone can see the service level from the work order and take action accordingly. For example, a set of parts is predefined for each service level in UpKeep, so when the work order is triggered by Unknot, the store manager can allocate the parts and restock when necessary.
Preventive maintenance based on actual usage
The usage of an asset can vary significantly from a day to another, and there isn’t a way to predict this. Therefore, calendar based maintenance and meter based maintenance are not effective as maintenance operations are often completed too soon or too late.
With Unknot updating the preventive maintenance work order due date daily based on the actual usage of the asset, Talley’s Limited Ashburton is now able to maintain its forklift fleet on time and only when it is actually required.
Put your technicians’ skills to work
Before Unknot, technicians weren’t using the meters in UpKeep as they spent up to an hour every day chasing the machines’ runtime and figuring out which one was due for a service.
With the connected meters, the runtime is available directly on their smartphone and UpKeep lets them know which machine is to be maintained, giving them more reliable information to take more initiative to reduce the number of reactive maintenance tasks.
Follow Talley’s steps and supercharge your CMMS!
Initial installation: Most mobile assets such as forklifts require a tracker that any
qualified electrician can install following Unknot’s instructions
● Make your machines safe and reliable with usage based preventive maintenance
● Reduce your response time when faults, alarms and collisions happen with reactive work order triggers
● Allow your technicians to track the runtime and location of their machines from their smartphone
Standard cost (NZD). Note: For seasonal usage, please ask us about our plans with no minimal term.
Wanting to know more about UpKeep CMMS? Talk to our experts.
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I hope this article sheds some light on the subject. Do not hesitate to leave your comments and raise questions. Thank you for your time.
This article is based on suggestions and personal studies aimed at generalising information. Please be respectful in your comments.