7 trends in fleet maintenance management

Maintenance management in transport fleets is essential to ensure that vehicles function properly. When routines are well planned, the operation can organize inspections, services, costs and decisions before minor failures turn into more expensive stops.

Even so, this is a field that became established in the market only a few years ago, which means there is still plenty of room for improvements, clearer processes and new technologies. With this in mind, we have brought together the main maintenance management trends. Take a look:

• Maintenance 4.0;
• Smart maintenance;
• Analytical and data-driven management;
• Training and autonomous maintenance;
• Sustainable maintenance;
• Prescriptive maintenance;
• Maintenance management software.

Watch the video we prepared (video in Portuguese):

Maintenance 4.0

Maintenance 4.0 stems from the concepts of both Logistics 4.0 and Industry 4.0. This numbering marks a milestone when technology becomes part of management routines, moving from occasional support to daily process monitoring.

The idea is to apply software and digital tools that read records more precisely and store them more securely. Instead of relying solely on disconnected records, the fleet starts gathering service history, work records and costs in more organized environments.

Managers can also use business intelligence solutions to analyze data and make decisions with greater confidence. Automatically updated reports and charts help visualize patterns, compare periods and understand where maintenance needs attention.

Smart maintenance

Smart maintenance is based on using artificial intelligence technologies in fleets. This can happen, for example, through systems that automate managers’ tasks, organize priorities and reduce manual work in repetitive routines.

The most advantageous features are found in maintenance systems that, in addition to automating vehicle maintenance routines and schedules, can turn operational records into useful information for decisions. In practice, the intelligence lies in cross-referencing inspection data, work orders, costs and failure history to guide the next step, without attributing automatic vehicle readings to Prolog.

Analytical and data-driven management

Even when systems do not use artificial intelligence, they still provide comprehensive data organization and automation of some tasks, such as generating reports for analysis. This type of management helps move maintenance away from intuition and grounds decisions in indicators that are monitored frequently.

The difference here is that managers play a greater part in analyzing these data and reports for their decisions. Based on the information in the system, you should evaluate maintenance indicators and understand where improvements are needed before setting new priorities.

And what are the main maintenance indicators? They include: MTBF, which represents mean operating time before failure; MTTR, which measures the mean time to repair a system or equipment after failure; CPMV; maintenance cost by vehicle type; maintenance cost by maintenance type; operational availability; preventive and corrective index; and other indicators that make sense for the fleet’s routine.

Training and autonomous maintenance

Even with greater use of technology, employee training remains very important. In fact, one maintenance management trend is implementing autonomous maintenance in fleets.

This management model develops the same employee, usually the driver, to handle all the basic tasks in a maintenance routine. They should therefore be responsible for:

• Keeping the vehicle clean and organized;
• Inspecting the vehicle using the daily and full checklists, according to the established schedule;
• Correcting minor faults that are identified;
• Gathering information for failure analysis and prevention.

This involvement does not replace the workshop or technical analysis, but improves the quality of records reaching management. When inspections are frequent and work records are organized, the team gains context to prioritize what needs to be resolved.

Sustainable maintenance

Sustainable maintenance is part of a sustainability and ESG practices strategy in transport. It covers actions such as acquiring more economical vehicle models and proper disposal of parts and packaging.

Since sustainability is a highly topical and important issue, sustainable maintenance is also considered one of the trends in maintenance management.

Prescriptive maintenance

Until recently, we talked only about three types of maintenance: corrective, preventive and predictive. Among these and other emerging types, the question arises as to which is the latest approach to fleet maintenance and which is best.

Generally, no single model is better than the others, just as no fleet successfully uses only one maintenance type. You need planning and to know when to apply each type, combining corrective, preventive, predictive and prescriptive actions according to the operation’s maturity.

Recently, so-called prescriptive maintenance has become a popular topic and one of the trends in maintenance management.

Rather than reducing the concept to a technology that merely finds a fault for a mechanic to fix, prescriptive maintenance can be understood as an approach that recommends maintenance tasks to resolve problems before they result in equipment failure or an unplanned stop. It relies on data, rules and decision support systems to suggest possible courses of action, but execution and validation still depend on the team’s routine.

Maintenance management software

Maintenance management software is a fundamental tool for anyone who needs to control fleet vehicle services, as well as budgets, general costs and spare parts inventory. It also helps keep work order history, repairs and team scheduling in one place.

It is the leading fleet maintenance management trend because it is a comprehensive, efficient technology that is more accessible than some of the other alternatives above. With maintenance plans by vehicle type and work orders based on mileage or dates, the operation can standardize routines without relying only on manual reminders.

A system to control fleet maintenance can also be integrated with an electronic checklist, another tool that speeds up operations and makes them more productive. This checklist technology makes inspections faster and allows work orders to be generated when nonconformities are identified.

Likewise, the maintenance system’s features include automation and generation of standalone work orders. In solutions such as Prolog, digital mobile inspections can open work orders automatically, and preventive maintenance can also be organized by mileage or schedule.

Want to learn more about how it works? Explore the maintenance management solution and discover all the details.