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Maintenance/Management

December 05, 2010 |

In the Magazine

Fleet management software

Once you put all your equipment data into an integrated software program you’ll wonder how you ever did without.

By Tom Jackson

Not every contractor needs a fully featured software product to help with equipment maintenance and management. But if you’re trying to manage a dozen or more pieces of yellow iron, an investment in – or upgrade to – a maintenance-management software system can offer an impressive range of dollar- and time-saving benefits.

There are numerous equipment and fleet management software programs available today. Dave Bennett, product manager at Maxwell Systems, puts these in three categories:

• Manual systems such as spreadsheets

• Stand-alone systems that reside on a single computer, and

• Integrated systems that run on a network that multiple users – including not only the shop, but accounting, senior management and others – can access.

In this article we’re going to focus primarily on the benefits of this last category of integrated programs that accept data flows from all levels of your organization.

How it works

Like a spreadsheet, equipment maintenance-management software programs allow you to keep equipment records on a computer, but unlike simple spreadsheets the more robust programs give you a vast array of tools with which to index, cross reference, study, search, set up alerts and compare information on these assets. According to Charles Arsenault, CEO of Arsenault Associates, these software programs can:

• give you to-the-penny accurate costs

• notify you when PMs are coming due

• generate repair orders