Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
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INNOVATORS AIM NATIONALEASE Girard, Ohio trainees would lose the skill before they ever got a chance to use it." EQUAL OPPORTUNITY Aim NationaLease creates method to ensure technicians use their training BY AARON HUFF U se it or lose it" is an appropriate adage for any training program for drivers, administrative staff, technicians or managers. Once the training is complete, people must apply what they've learned, or their new knowledge and skill will fade and ultimately vanish over time. In practice, giving employees an equal opportunity to apply their training can be difficult. Some are better at certain jobs due to natural ability or experience. A fleet maintenance supervisor can spot his expert technicians, and he will assign them the more complex repairs time and again. He needs to ensure the repairs are completed on time and at a high quality level to please his own boss and customers. Aim NationaLease operates 44 maintenance facilities across the nation that service its two company divisions: a leasing and rental fleet of more than 7,000 trucks, and a 400-truck Dedicated Logistics fleet. Last June, the Girard, Ohio-based company created a strategy to make its technician training more effective by monitoring repair work assigned to trainees after they complete a course. Aim has three full-time trainers that travel the country to teach technicians onsite. The class structures have been in place since 2011. Nothing seemed to be lacking in the program's quality, but the results were uneven at times. Suppose a trainer held a class on repairing reefer units in January at the facility in Buffalo, N.Y., and 10 technicians attended the class. Six months later, a technician in Buffalo quit. Suddenly, management saw the quality of reefer repairs begin to suffer. "We trained 10 people there, so how could losing one guy impact the operation so much?" says John Reed, chief information officer. "The answer was that once the class was over, the expert at the shop was still getting all the work. The The new watchdog Aim had been using a software system developed in-house, ProStaff, to track human resource information such as personal information, vacation time, disciplinary actions, certifications and accidents. Chris Disantis, director of training and field technical support, collaborated with Reed and his IT team to create a new method to track the training and experience employees received. The company has seven different training courses organized by vehicle system, such as tires, electrical and brakes. Whenever technicians complete a course, trainers enter a three-digit Vehicle Maintenance Reporting System code into the technician's training profile in ProStaff; this new feature was added last June. The full VMRS code consists of nine digits and is used by Aim to track repair information in its fleet maintenance software system and also identify the technician assigned to each repair. Reed, with his IT staff, created a program that shows if technicians were given opportunities to use their training soon after they completed a course. To do this, the program queries the VMRS codes from repair orders in the maintenance software by facility. The program looks at the first three-digit system codes – denoting the vehicle system (tires, brakes, transmissions, etc.) – that were recorded during a given time period, such as 90 days, following a train- Software program compares codes for repair orders and training to ensure work is distributed evenly. COMMERCIAL CARRIER JOURNAL | FEBRUARY 2013 CCJ_0213_Innovators.indd 33 33 1/23/13 8:35 AM