vice planning. Access to fault codes, performance data and operating trends helped the shop identify issues earlier and schedule preventive maintenance before they developed into larger problems, such as engine or after-treatment failures.” Fleet maintenance at Dorchester County operates un-
der a different model. The state of South Carolina owns, fuels, repairs and maintains the school buses used for home-to-school transportation. “The state uses the same GPS/telematics platform that
I previously worked with as part of a comprehensive statewide school bus maintenance and repair program,” said Johnson. “The system provides diagnostic data and operational insights that support maintenance planning and help ensure buses remain available to districts for daily service. In addition to the state-owned fleet, I oversee a smaller group of district-owned multi-function school activity buses used for extracurricular and athletic trips.” Based on that experience, Dorchester Couty recently
installed the same GPS/telematics equipment on those buses as well “The goal is similar: Using vehicle data to support pre-
ventive maintenance scheduling and identify potential issues early,” he continued. “Because these buses are serviced by external repair vendors rather than an in- house shop, GPS/telematics data also helps us recognize developing issues and share diagnostic information with the vendor so repairs can be addressed more efficiently before they lead to a breakdown or service disruption.” Other districts are slowly implementing telematics in
collaboration with GPS. Not all districts have all their buses wired yet. Phillip
Noteboom is the fleet manager in the office of trans- portation and fleet services of the Virginia Beach Public
Schools in Virginia. “A portion of our bus fleet does have a basic manufac-
turer provided telematic system that sends emails when engine faults are detected,” said Noteboom. “Only some models and years produced by a specific manufactur- er have this feature—about 50 percent of our buses, but again, not tied into the maintenance system. The bulk of our [preventive maintenance is programmatic scheduled] with buses being regulated by the state. Repairs and faults are generally communicated to us by operators.”
In Pursuit of Uptime There are many motives for investing in predictive and planned maintenance technologies. Obviously, safety plays a center stage role. But another key measure of the efficacy of maintenance technology is the uptime and performance results it affords. “Since implementing predictive and planned mainte- nance, we’ve seen a noticeable shift in how our work is managed and the impact on uptime,” said Todd Hawkins, the senior vice president of maintenance for First Student “Today, about 73 percent of all our work is planned main- tenance. When we first introduced predictive analytics, the number was around 48 percent, so we’ve been able to move roughly 25 percent more of our work into the shop proactively rather than reacting to failures on the road.” Hawkins said that it’s not just the predictive system
alone but the combination of a broader planned mainte- nance program [with it] has had a real impact. “Our breakdowns on route have decreased, and buses spend more time available for service instead of waiting for repairs,” he said. “Essentially, we’re catching issues early, performing maintenance before they turn into road-side problems, and that has made our fleet far more reliable.”
www.stnonline.com 35
PHOTO COURTESY OF FORT BEND (TEXAS) ISD.
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