Ep. #14: Benefits of a Planned Maintenance Program

This episode of Right from the Source features. the Vice President and General Manager of Arbon. logistics operations. You're listening to right from the source, expert insights on energy savings, and environmental control.

This is right from the source and today with us we have Jerry Timms. Jerry, welcome to the program. Thanks, Ken. Glad to be here. So Jerry, first off, uh what is your title? I am uh Vice President General Manager for Arbon Equipment where I do the sales and operations for the company. Been there about thirty one years, new guy and been in the in industry the whole time.

So today we will be talking about the benefits of a plan maintenance program. So it's it's kinda sounds like you're the guy to talk to on that. Some days I am. Yes. Perfect. Outside of work, do you have any hobbies or passions that you like to pursue? Always working on a golf game, Ken. Uh right. Trying to get better. But uh it's coming winding to an end right now. Yes it is. Those Wisconsin winners come swiftly. Yep. Alright, so let's dive into it here.

First off, for our listeners who maybe don't know what a plan maintenance program or a a PMP is, um can can you explain what it is? Absolutely. Uh our PMP program or plan maintenance, many people know it as. It's a schedule of regular visits for maintenance by our technicians out to a facility to check on the equipment, make sure it's working properly so uh the company and the customers can get their product and continue their operations.

Now, why would a facility manager be interested in this option? Well these days a lot of people don't have people that can actually do all the work and all the maintenance on on all the equipment. So uh from an Arbond standpoint and right height network they'd be interested from a s standpoint of safety, you know, making sure the equipment's working properly, safely uh uh properly lubricated and adjusted. Uh maintenance is a is a huge aspect. Uh we have saving on energy.

So if the technicians out there you can take a look on the dock seals and the door seals, make sure that they're not broken and just overall making sure that the equipment's working properly. Yeah, I mean they they say even the best equipment that's out there, I mean it could be built to last, could be super durable, but I mean when we're talking especially loading docks, a lot of heavy machinery, these things take a lot of hits and you're gonna need someone to service them.

Oh absolutely. I mean uh some of the loading docks uh have minimum of a hundred thousand cycles per year going across them. You know, depending on the customer's needs, they could be doing one, two or three shifts a day, which is twenty-four hours. So heavy use, increased usage. their needs are gonna be a little bit different than somebody who's just, you know, ha has a couple of trucks during a day. So you mentioned that uh safety is certainly a a big component.

How is a PMP, how how does that improve safety? Well, overall, again, they they have the energy savings. If uh if one of our technicians comes out, obviously they're gonna be looking for stress fractures in a in a dock level or another set of eyes.

To be blunt, many people don't look underneath their dock leveler, so there's a lot of things stored under there that should not be there. So cleaning, lubricating adjustment. And most importantly, they get they have a detailed report, inspection report every time our technicians come out. So they can't do that.

prevent any uh big serious uh maintenance problems from occurring. How does a plan maintenance program work? That is to say, how does the process even start and what does that look like? Well, uh first of all, customers can contact you know right height.com. They could go online, they can see who their representative or dealer is.

if they don't already know who our local salesperson is. At that point, somebody would come out, maybe our field service rep, and they'd come out, and obviously we do a detailed free inspection report. of all the equipment. We go through all the aspects of what type of equipment, how long it's been installed, whether it's right height or maybe a a competitive piece of equipment that we do maintenance on as well.

They get all that information together, we make a report for the customer, we we explain the options in our plans. And uh we we go from there. What are some of the options in your plans? Uh could you have someone coming out like every quarter, every like in semi annually? Absolutely can. I mean we c we can customize it for the uh customers uh operation, but most likely we like to come out once per quarter.

So we can, you know, have a technician put a set of eyes on the piece of equipment before anything occurs to it. uh that you can do semi annually if you want. Usually it's three to four times a year that we we make the recommendation for. For the most part we'd come out, we clean out the pit, you know, make sure everything's free of debris. You'd be surprised what we find underneath these dock levelers uh and clean lubricate and adjust.

and show the customer the inspection report. So we go through the whole analysis before they make a commitment.

So you mentioned uh loading dock levelers specifically here so far today. Are there other pieces of equipment that uh Arbon uh reps can go out and take a peek at? Absolutely. I mean probably the big four that we do, we we do the loading dock. Obviously all different varieties of dock levelers, uh our vehicle restraints, obviously a piece of safety equipment with communication systems on there. So we have to make sure that they're working properly. Of course the dock doors.

So doc doors get a lot of usage up and down every day. And we also do fire door drop tests. Mm. And that's a a a a big component of of our maintenance programs as well. Now you mentioned communication uh aspects to the loading dock leveler specifically, uh which is kind of fascinating. Are are they looking at any of the internal components to that or just making sure that the communication system is working properly and and uh the timing is is uh is is proper with uh the actual restraint?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean they're going to go through the whole sequence. Obviously, once they have that dock leveler in the in the up position, they're looking underneath of it.

And they're watching just simple things of having uh uh proper bulbs, LEDs in your communication on the outside and as opposed on the inside if the control box is working properly. So you're checking to see if all the whole operation for the customer is in is in good working condition and if there's any potential failures coming up from stress fractures or or anything that they're seeing down around that loading dock area.

Can you talk talk a little bit about some of those uh keys that maybe a technician is looking for, whether it's a stress fracture or something else that can maybe help save a customer money down the line even? Yeah, I mean all the different types of dock levers, obviously that's a you know, the largest piece of equipment and it's moving, it's getting impacted by a fork truck on a day to day basis.

So they're taking into consideration the customer's operation and the wear and tear that's actually putting on there. Simple things like the dock bumpers. They're looking wear and tear on the dock bumpers. They're checking the hold down mechanisms, uh obviously all the welds to make sure it's in good safe working condition. And all the wear points. That's the key component of it. So the lubricating adjusting and making sure everything's wearing the way it should be.

So kind of one of the the advantages to having a a trained technician coming out versus a facility saying, Hey, you know, Joe Schmo over here, he's he's pretty good with this stuff. It's uh it's it's kind of a heightened level of of service that can be provided.

Absolutely. You know, I you know, customers obviously they're trying to they're just trying to get their equipment maintained a proper way and sometimes they're using a overhead door dealer that's not trained in loading dock equipment or or that type piece of safety equipment. So from an Arbond standpoint and also uh our right height representative network

We have factory trained technicians that come out. So that's really important if the technician finds something out there that needs to be replaced. They have the part on the truck. They don't have to charge the customer for a comeback visit. So all that comes into play.

Now is that something that also sets apart maybe Arbon from some of the other uh service techs that are out there in terms of a a PM uh program? Absolutely. I mean from an Arbon standpoint, consistency is the most important thing. So we want customers in Edison, New Jersey and and Roanoke, Virginia and Anaheim, California have the same exact feel from Arbon. Pretty much the same with our right height uh network as well, as far as their consistency and the fact that

At Arabon we have even our Arabon Skills Assessment Pay Program that we started. And it's basically a a series of testing that all of our technicians have to go through that make them consistent as far as their welding, the mechanical, electrical skills. and obviously how they proceed as an opportunity for advancement with us as well. I think I think that really does Ken put us in a different category when it comes to especially national customers on service.

Uh, I'm gonna back up just a little bit and ask a question about the fact that you are coming out there potentially quarterly. That could mean a dock position is down for I don't know how long, a few hours or so while they're out there? Uh does this ever get in the way of doing business for facilities? Is that a concern of theirs at all? And how do you sort of

Mitigate that. You know, we have to work with the customer. A lot of customers are not going to shut down ten of their dock positions to allow us to do this maintenance. So it's an ongoing process for us to continue to work with the customer to get all the maintenance done as per y our agreement initially. But we do have emergency service If the customer's dock is down for any given reason. And under our plan, obviously there's discounts available to the customer that as a maintenance.

program, you know, they can take advantage of as well. So the old adage If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Maybe is still true, but maybe not exactly. Well, uh i that holds true in a lot of cases, especially with customers per se. Maybe they don't have a lot of trucks. Maybe they're only getting three or four trucks.

and they're very light loads so they can get away with that. But once you get up to like a beverage company that moves a lot of pallets very quick on a three shift basis and they have trucks stacked up on their dock Basically every hour of the day they can ill afford to have one of these docks down.

So that maintenance uh is really important for them. So we pay special attention. Every single program that you have, every contract that you have with a client, it's tailored to them, correct? Absolutely. Obviously we You know, we take into consideration our equipment, how their operation's doing, one, two, or three shifts a day, and how many docs they can give us.

you know, to do the maintenance on. So absolutely we work with them as closely as possible. So Jerry, is there anything else that you feel like we missed on that you w would like to talk about as it comes to our plan maintenance programs? Well, we're making a lot of strides from an electronic standpoint. All of our technicians have iPads when they come out there. We're hooked up with a new ServiceMax scheduling tool that we're utilizing with our technicians.

from a reporting standpoint, our Arbon Skills Assessment Pay Program. So my point is we're we're investing a lot of money in our service techs and also we have uh tech trainers Uh that go around the country and just specifically work with our technicians. While at the same time we have them, we also have dedicated PMP vans and programs specialized for certain customers.

So we're trying to cover everybody can. Not an easy game as far as service and maintenance, but uh we're we're we're continually improving both from electronics standpoint and also from uh a training standpoint on our technician. Well, you got a lot of ground to cover. There's a lot of right height equipment out there and as you mentioned, it's not all right height equipment that you're servicing. It's a dynamic business for sure.

But uh we're we're fully vested in it. Well, Jerry, thanks for joining us on the Right from the Source podcast here today. Thanks, Ken. Appreciate it. If you enjoyed this episode of Write from the Source, be sure to subscribe on your preferred listening platform and follow Right Height's social media channels. Want more supply chain logistics solutions for your facility? Is it right?