HEADLINES
Barcodes, System-Control Parts Help School Bus Operator Streamline Maintenance Operations
By John Bendel Bob Nolen can’t say exactly how much eastern Pennsylvania
school bus operator Hagey Coach has saved through smart parts management, but he does say the benefits are self-evident. With $200,000 to $300,000 of inventory — including tires —
at any given time, the fleet and facility manager at Hagey Coach says he saves between $10,000 and $15,000 a year on core returns and warranty recovery. Beyond that, numbers are hard to come by, but the advantages of parts control are clear. For example, he said inventory
includes virtually no obsolete parts, and he always knows the total value of his inventory within a few dollars. Hagey operates a fleet of 170 school buses in Soud- erton, Pa., 30 minutes northwest of Philadelphia. Te company also runs a fleet of 20 motorcoaches and a five-bay, state-of-the-art maintenance shop with a crew of six full-time technicians. Nolen began wrestling with
parts costs when he came to Hagey 10 years ago. His first step was aggressive shopping, or find- ing identical parts at better prices. “Some things you can buy after-
market much cheaper than from dealers, and we’re talking apples to apples, the same exact part. You’ve got to price-shop, and you’ve got to know your vendors. You don’t always check multiple places, but you do periodic checks,” Nolen said. Initially, Nolen struggled to
“Barcoding all your parts, you can do an inventory any time.
You can scan a barcode in the parts room and check your in- ventory count. If you’re doing a major cleanup and moving parts around, you can pull up a part and change its location right then and there,” he said. Locations on the parts room shelves are included in the Dos-
sier data called up by a barcode scan, Nolen explained. “Now I’m within dollars of be-
ing 100 percent on at inventory time,” he said. Nolen said inventory of stock
parts is maintained by minimum and maximum quantities. When a mechanic takes a part off the shelf, its barcode is scanned. If the stock level for that part has reached the set minimum, Nolen is notified via the program’s daily reminder screen that it’s time to reorder. “I can click on that message and
the part will pop up on the screen. If I double-click on the part number, a purchase order opens with a pur- chase order number,” Nolen said. Using that PO number, the parts
are ordered online or by phone and the barcode labels are printed after the received parts are entered into the system. Te result has been major sav-
Bob Nolen, fleet and facility manager at Hagey Coach in Souderton, Pa.
control his parts room, particu- larly at annual inventory time. Inventory was taken on paper. “You’d write down the part number and how many you had on
the shelf. You’d bring it in and enter it into the computer. But while you’re doing that, someone goes in and takes a part off the shelf,” he said. “I could be thousands of dollars off on the inventory.” Tat began to change eight years ago when Nolen replaced
legacy maintenance management software with the Dossier ap- plication from Arsenault Associates. Parts control is built into the system. Nolen soon added barcoding and later a Symbol wireless handheld computer and scanner that talks to the database.
24 School Transportation News Magazine March 2011
ings when it comes to obsolete parts. Many fleets find them- selves with obsolete parts that don’t fit any of their current ve- hicles, Nolen explained. “Now they have to sell them, but
the parts may be six or seven years old. Tey can’t get anything for them,” he added. When Hagey buses near the end of their lives, Nolen stops re-
stocking parts specific to those vehicles. When the last bus leaves the fleet, its parts inventory is likely gone as well. “Because we track parts so well, we are able to keep obsolete
parts down to nothing. We can run a quick report. Here’s the parts number. What’s it used on? We can print out a report with every bus that uses that part, and we can adjust our inventory accordingly,” Nolen said. “Tat saves us a fortune.” ■
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