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BAY WATCH

18th March 2004, Page 88
18th March 2004
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Do you run a busy CV workshop? Robin Meczes takes a look at a software system that's designed to make sure the whole operation runs as smooth as silk..

Scheduling maintenance for a small fleet is pretty routine, but the larger the fleet gets, the larger your workshop is likely to be and the more complicated it all becomes. Are the right spares and consumables available? Are staff holidays or sickness making labour an issue? is there enough slack for emergency repairs? Get any of this wrong and it can get very chaotic very quickly — often increasing costly vehicle downtime while you try and sort it all out Traditional fleet management software often includes some form of diary function to remind you of safety inspections,routine maintenance or annual test preparation, but it's not designed to help you plan the space, time, parts and staff to complete the work.

That's where dedicated workshop software such as Distinctive Systems' Vehicle Maintenance System (VMS), can help.

Originally aimed at PSV operators,VMS has been marketed at the HGV sector since last year's Commercial Vehicle Show, and it's hard to think of any aspect of running a workshop that can't be handled by this software.

The core workshop system allows you to: • Enter all kinds of details on vehicles or trailers • Automatically schedule regular maintenance jobs • Add in unscheduled activities as necessary • Define the number and types of workshop bays available *Assign jobs to bays on particular times and days • Keep records of workshop staff availability, skills and pay rates • Assign appropriate staff to particular jobs • Cost those jobs based on the parts and labour used • Review how long jobs take to carry out compared to prediction.

Sort jobs by date or mileage

Regular maintenance tasks are scheduled according to estimated vehicle mileage (worked out from actual mileages you're forced to enter whenever any aspect of a vehicle or job is updated) or simply by date. Unscheduled activities, of course, can be entered at any time.

There are plenty of sub-levels to the functionality, such as a useful accidents and incidents facility which helps you keep records of any incidents, along with third-party and insurance claim details; a fuel and oil usage feature for recording quantities, costs and locations as well as vehicle and employee details; an insurance certificates record to keep track of brokers, certificate numbers,start/end dates and excesses; and a graphical wallchart style planner that shows at a glance which jobs fall on which days for which vehicles.

An optional purchase ledger/stock control module lets you keep records on parts suppliers. prices and individual parts availability in your stockroom.recording goods delivered.generating lists of parts predictably required for each job. producing picking lists to gather them, and even automatically checking stock levels against approaching work and generating purchase orders for any parts that are missing.

Keep records of third parties

The optional sales ledger/invoice module, which was just being completed at the time of our test, will keep full records of any third parties for whom you maintain vehicles, automatically generating invoices as work is completed and keeping account histories.

In fact, there isn't much it won't do in terms of running your workshop and one of the advantages is that much of the software is userdefinable in terms of what details are kept and how it's presented.

The reporting facility is a particular strength of this software,with all manner of breakdowns available on vehicles, suppliers,customers. workshop activity, individual employee activity, parts usage, and costs — again, all largely user definable.

We particularly liked the workshop optimiser which shows vou,in bar chart form, where the workload peaks and troughs are going to fall on different days, giving you the chance to balance things out by moving jobs around.

The software even highlights other work due on the same vehicle around the same time, giving you the option to group jobs together and keep vehicle downtime to a minimum.

Overall, the scope. functionality, efficiency and integration of all these features are impressive and we found this a smart and highly competent package that does everything it promises in a professional manner.

Having said this, there were two things we weren't wild about.

First off was the overall complexity of the software and some of the processes you need to go through. For example. when you want to enter details of your first truck you have to first tell the software to recognise HGVs as a vehicle type, then enter,say.Daf as a vehicle maker and CF85 as a model, and only then can you go to the "new vehicle" screen and enter the vehicle in question, selecting HGV as the vehicle type. Daf as the manufacturer and CF85 as the model.

We can't help thinking you should be able to just go to the new vehicle screen.enter any make, model or vehicle type and have the software automatically update its own list of details from there so they're available from the drop-down list the next time around.

Too expensive Similarly. with the wall planner. we'd like to be able to just click on a date and enter a new job. lnstead,you have to enter the job elsewhere (one of two places depending on whether it's scheduled or unscheduled), and then manu ally update the wall planner before it actually shows up there.

The software isn't, therefore, as intuitive or simple to use as we'd like.

But our second and biggest gripe by far is that we feel the core software and associated costs are probably too expensive to appeal to much of the HGV market. Buy it for a 25vehicle fleet (£2,500), add a second operator (£500) at a second site (£1.000), give the second operator a day and a halfs training at your own site (£1,090), then throw in your obligatory 15% maintenance charge (£375) and you're already up to £5,465— and that's before you even consider the optional invoice or stock control modules.

A six-user, triple-site package for 50 vehicles with both optional modules will set you back a whopping£11250 before you've even thought about the rather high staff training costs.

We were left feeling that Distinctive's VMS might be a goer if you're running a large and busy workshop for a fleet of 20-plus vehicles (and find yourself running into constant trouble in terms of co-ordinating your vehicles, bays,staff and other resources), or if you're a third party commercial vehicle workshop. But we doubt anyone running any smaller an operation or running a large operation without problem will be able to justify the complexity,sophistication or cost of this software.

And that's a shame, because if it were priced at a flat rate off 1,000 or so it would be hard for any vehicle operator running their own workshop, whatever its size, to justify not buying it.m

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