Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
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INNOVATORS If you see repairs happening more frequently, you know things are getting better. – John Reed, Aim NationaLease ing course. The program also queries ProStaff to find the technicians in the facility trained for a particular system code. "If there was a class on the safe handling of tires, we would look for a VMRS code starting with 017," Reed says. "If there was training in Buffalo with four students, we would make sure each student was receiving tasks relating to the training." Aim uses the program to send a weekly exception report to regional coordinators. The report shows the distribution of repair orders for the technicians who took a class and singles out the technicians who received training but were either not assigned tasks or received an uneven distribution. The exception report helps regional coordinators focus on their facilities that continuously have issues with not spreading the work around. "Often times, the shop supervisors weren't consciously giving the work to their 'expert,' but with a busy day and a lot of work, their focus was on getting the unit back quickly to the customer and not necessarily about bringing the skill level of the entire team up," Reed says. "The old method may have gotten the job done a little faster in the short term, but the long-term effect was if the expert was off that day, the job didn't get done." Better planning As part of the upgrades to Aim's ProStaff software, Reed added planning tools that help trainers locate and focus on technicians and facilities. At a glance, the software shows the courses that technicians, by facility, have completed and which ones they are lacking. It also shows the grades they received for each class. 34 Having this and other information in a database, as opposed to on a paper form or spreadsheet, has proven useful for scheduling advanced courses that have prerequisites. Ideally, the prerequisite courses need to be scheduled within a shorter timeframe to help technicians retain information. Before the upgrade to ProStaff, trainers were relying on records kept by shop supervisors and their own paper records to plan their schedules. "We had all the right information, but we were not putting it all together," Reed says. "Now we can see who has taken what and who needs what. It's a nice form to use when going into an area." Up to speed Changing the natural order of how work is assigned by distributing it to technicians based on their training, rather than their experience level, tends to "slow things down until everyone gets up to speed," Reed says. Aim NationaLease has three full-time trainers that travel the country to teach technicians onsite. But after the initial drop in productivity, the benefits of this method begin to show up in ways that are not always easy to measure with hard data. "You could argue that it's better or worse," Reed says. "But that's the only thing you can do to drive change in the system." One example of where the new training program could show up in hard data is an increase in certain types of repairs by shift. Aim has day, afternoon and evening shifts at many of its facilities. Before the new training method, complex repairs that came in during the night, such as reefer units, might have been set aside for the expert who works during the day shift. The new method could be responsible for a facility having an increase in reefer repairs during the evening shift. "If you see repairs happening more frequently, you know things are getting better," Reed says. As part of the program, Aim began to include a new measure in the scorecard for shop supervisors. The measure – one of 12 criteria in the scorecard – shows how evenly shop supervisors distributed work to technicians based on training. The overall score is used in their incentive bonus calculation. Employee retention should be another benefit of the training program, Reed says. Technicians will see the training they receive from Aim as part of a career path that begins with a four-year apprenticeship program. Upon completion of the program, technicians get a $16,500 toolkit. Technicians see themselves become more valuable not only as they complete the training but also as they share in the work, Reed says. "Overall, this method brings up the skill level of the entire facility and increases the speed and effectiveness of our repairs," he says. CCJ INNOVATORS profiles carriers and fleets that have found innovative ways to overcome trucking's challenges. If you know a carrier that has displayed innovation, contact Jeff Crissey at jcrissey@ccjmagazine.com or 800-633-5953. COMMERCIAL CARRIER JOURNAL | FEBRUARY 2013 CCJ_0213_Innovators.indd 34 1/23/13 8:35 AM