Forklift Fleet Management System | Lift Solutions, Inc.
Is your forklift fleet growing and taking up a larger place in your budget and warehouse operations? If so, you might want to consider a forklift management program to control costs, ensure quality operation, and track necessary information. What is a forklift management program? And what benefits can it provide your company? Discover a few answers.
What Is Forklift Fleet Management?
At its heart, a forklift fleet management system is a method of collecting information about various aspects of the way your forklifts are used and maintained. The goal of this system is to identify ways to improve efficiency, to prevent unnecessary breakdowns, to understand usage trends, and to keep you apprised of what new expenses may be coming up.
Modern fleet management often relies on advanced technology to collect most of this data and compile it into reports that the company can use to make decisions. The vehicles themselves may send wireless data on a regular basis to designated software. Operators, accounting staff, and others may also contribute information when they go about normal tasks such as ordering and paying for repairs.
What Information Does Fleet Management Provide?
When you have many lift trucks to keep track of, software that does the leg work of data collection makes things easier and more accurate. An electronic system may track things like:
- The operators of each truck
- Each truck’s usage time
- Cumulative hours and miles of operation
- Percentage of shift that each truck is in motion
- Damage to forklifts or other incidents
- Repairs and regular maintenance
- Expenses attributable to specific units
- Amount of downtime
- Special characteristics of certain lifts
Clearly, this information can be wide-ranging. A company looking to improve in all areas of warehouse operations might find enough to keep their managers busy for a long time. But if your goals are more modest, you can tailor a management system to provide only the data you are specifically looking for.
How Can You Use This Information?
Data is, of course, only useful if you can make decisions based on it. In the case of fleet management system data, you have a variety of opportunities to make improvements.
The forklifts send updates as to their hours of usage, for instance, so that management knows when certain vehicles are reaching the end of their lifespan. If the data indicates a particular forklift is used excessively, you might be able to better balance usage among trucks. When the working hours or miles of a truck are low, this may indicate an underused vehicle or one that breaks down often.
Many management systems also track some information about who operates the trucks. This way, you can be sure that only authorized employees starting and use forklifts and see how long employees use them. The software may alert you to which operators have certifications or need annual updates, provide OSHA compliance information, and remind you to have periodic safety training as well.
Information about forklift movements can help you identify areas where warehouse operations are inefficient or where projects actually take less time than allocated in job costing. You might be able to offer incentives for workers who spend more time completing tasks on their trucks. And you will know who was in control of which lifts when accidents or damage occurred.
Where Should You Begin?
If you think that you want to implement a fleet management system, how can you get started? The forklift specialists at Lift Solutions, Inc., are ready to help. We offer a multitude of services for warehouses of all sizes and can help you design a management system that targets what you need to know in order to improve your business. Call today to learn more.
Latest Posts
