Keeping tabs on 560 brewery trucks
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• A newly installed Adapta Chart system for the 560-vehicle Watney Mann fleet at Mortlake Brewery is proving so successful that another chart has been designed and installed to cover a maintenance programme on fork-lift trucks. The chart 'system gives an up-to-the-minute picture of every unit in the vehicle fleet. The vehicles vary from 30-ton tractive units to 7cwt vans.
The Watney Mann installation consists of seven panels, each equipped to cover 90 vehicles. Each panel incorporates a card index unit housing folded A4 size information cards. A card for each vehicle lists such information as vehicle fleet and registration number, date of purchase, gross weight, unladen weight, payload, chassis and engine numbers, number of axles and their ratios, brake type, tyres fitted, fuel pump type, electrical voltage, ignition key number, suppliers' name and so on.
The card has a three-year life-span — blue, green and red ink is used for the separate 12-month periods — and cumulative mileage figures are inserted weekly. All the information is readily available when required, so that maintenance work is not hindered by delays in obtaining the correct components. The chart is employed to progress maintenance against both mileage and time, each vehicle being allocated two elastic flowlines, a yellow one recording time, and a red one, mileage. The time flowline is moved weekly across the chart and, as the weekly mileage figures become available, they are recorded on the card index and the mileage flow line re-positioned appropriately.
Maintenance is planned principally on a 3000-mile basis so that as a flowline approaches any of the 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18-thousand mile markers, the relevant vehicle is called in for the appropriate servicing, and the mechanics are notified of work to be executed.
The time scale used enables the current overall fleet picture to be appreciated and it permits time-based service work such as anti-freeze in, or out, and DoE test application dates, to be pinpointed. The time scale flowlines are moved across the chart as work is carried out on each vehicle, and thus signal the next service required.
Plastic signals of various colours and shapes are displayed on the chart to give the detail required. The expiry date of the current test certificate and the date, two months in advance of expiry — on which application should be made to the DoE for another test — are shown in this way. Other signals show vehicle location, if not at Mortlake; whether sky-boards are fitted; whether vehicles are less than 30cwt (in which case DoE tests are not needed until the vehicle is three years old). Yellow markers show when any particular vehicle has been under repair during the past year. A special "This Week" column, on the left of the chart, gives signal details of immediate action required.
Adapta Chart systems are marketed by Movitex Signs Ltd, 107 High Street, Edgware, Middlesex.