Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/625735
commercial carrier journal | january 2016 31 Making sense of remote diagnostics Here's a 6-step guide to help identify trends I n the 1990s, Ken Calhoun was working at a 500-truck fleet when the electronic era of equipment mainte- nance was ushered in by the on-highway Detroit Diesel Series 60 engine and its electronically controlled DDEC system. Soon after, the fleet installed Qualcomm to track its vehicles and communicate with drivers. Calhoun observed that the diagnostics port for electronic engines was only 3 feet away from the Qualcomm devices. "Why are they not talking to each other?" he wondered. Today's modern remote diagnostics services are a valuable re- source, but Calhoun says they presently do not help fleets "get in front of problems. You are reacting to information on one truck at a time." Further analysis of fault code data is needed to identify trends and adjust preventive maintenance schedules to correct problems before they become critical situations, he says. A utility fleet had installed telematics devices on its vehicles and began using Navis- tar's OnCommand Connect portal. After a week, regional ser- vice managers at the company felt over- whelmed by data. "They asked me if I was interested in making sense of this," says Calhoun, who has started a company, Roan- wood Maintenance Data Management, that offers daily re- porting and analysis services to fleets. His data management approach can be described as a "how-to" guide to make sense of remote diagnostics data. 1: Go after low-hanging fruit. Calhoun knows from experi- ence that more than one-third of all engine failures are triggered by a coolant issue. He focused on the five coolant-related fault codes that have the greatest impact on asset utilization and ranked them by increasing severity. 2: Remove the garbage. Every morning, Calhoun ex- ports data from OnCommand Connect into a spreadsheet template and filters out all noncritical fault codes unre- lated to the cooling system. He also uses the "lookup" func- tion and pivot tables to marry and group fault code data by make, model, engine type and unit num- bers for analysis. 3: Take immedi- ate actions. Drivers may see a low coolant warning on their dash display, but other fault codes such as "engine coolant below de-rate level" appear before the "check engine" light turns on. The remedy for these two codes is to add a gallon or two of coolant. 4: Spot monthly trends. Calhoun maintains an ongoing dashboard-style report to monitor the frequency of fault codes that appear in separate categories that include the year, make and model of the vehicle and engine, as well as persons responsible for the maintenance of each vehicle. Fault codes are reported by frequency and compared to the total fleet population to identify outliers. 5: Make conclusions. Calhoun can determine trends related to specific makes and models of trucks, as well as engines. 6: Adjust PM schedules. The utility fleet now is scheduling pressure checks for 2010 vehicles with cooling system fault codes during oil drain intervals. The strategies have helped reduce fault codes and failures. Making the latest technology developMents work for your fleet by AAron Huff technology UnfUlfilled resoUrce: today's modern remote diagnostics services do not help fleets 'get in front of problems.' stopping sitUations: further analysis of fault code data is need- ed to identify trends and adjust pM schedules. 'How-to' gUide: an information management approach can help make sense of remote diagnostics data. aaron huff is senior editor of Commercial Carrier Journal. e-mail ahuff@ccjmagazine.com or call 385-225-9472. This dashboard-style report from Roanwood Maintenance Data Manage- ment shows the frequency of coolant fault codes by category. Ken Calhoun has created a service to help fleets make sense of real-time diagnostics information.