A live view of the equipment fleet
Here we learn from ToolSense about the benefits of modern digital asset management.
The topic of ‘asset management’ has so far been neglected in the cleaning industry. There’s still a lot of potential for increasing efficiency: with new technologies, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), this potential can be tapped.
The average direct costs for equipment and resources are only 5-7% of the total annual costs. For a long time, they were understandably regarded as a side issue. Currently, there’s an awareness in the industry that neglecting asset management entails high hidden costs or has a direct impact on work processes and communication channels in many places.
In this context, the unloved topic of inventory comes to mind. There’s often a great deal of uncertainty in companies about the total stock of equipment and resources, which can often be valued in the millions of pounds. There can also be the inadequate or even completely forgotten inspections of, for example, electrical assets (PAT-Testing) and ladders, due to incorrect implementation, planning, and documentation.
In summary: for an industry like cleaning, where every penny is turned over three times, there’s still a lot of potential for increasing efficiency. Cleaning companies usually have mixed fleets or work with machines and assets from different manufacturers. The goal must be to standardise these operating resources.
The Status Quo
Currently, asset management in most companies is lived in two realities. On the one hand, there’s a theoretical reality in the form of the ERP system and accounting in the back office. On the other hand, there’s the practical reality in
46 | CLEANING MACHINES
the field and with the site managers, which is reflected in numerous Excel lists that are updated once a year with great difficulty. These realities often have little in common. As a result, this leads to numerous expensive problems:
Problem 1: Testing of assets and equipment is typically planned manually by the site manager, carried out by the service partner in paper form, and in some cases documented with mixed methods. This means that there’s little comparison or traceability. In addition, the inspections entail high costs of between £15-30 per asset. The site managers could actually do this on their own with suitable digital tools.
Problem 2: Purchase decisions are still very subjective today. The reason for this is that there’s a lack of data to make fact-based decisions. Equipment is purchased that is a few pounds cheaper, but then causes several thousand pounds in maintenance costs during operation, and further process costs.
Problem 3: Big equipment is often not necessary at all, but is ultimately purchased. As a result, this equipment is not used frequently and ties up valuable capital. Or the other way around: perhaps you actually need a bigger machine in order to save many cleaning hours.
Problem 4: Up to now, service processes have mainly been carried out manually, which costs site managers a lot of time. In addition, service processes are regularly triggered because of trivialities, which in turn can cause high costs.
Problem 5: Due to manual inventory in the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system or based on Excel, most companies don’t have an overview of the actual asset
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