Working with Trapeze, AAATA defined and tracked essential KPIs to optimize the rich data generated from EAM and improve their maintenance efficiency and control costs
When Candace Moore arrived at AAATA in 2018 as the Manager of Fleet Services for TheRide, she wanted to analyze the efficiency of the agency’s maintenance practices. Candace quickly learned that Trapeze’s EAM system currently in use was a valuable resource for data. But she also recognized that ‘data for data’s sake’ has no intrinsic value – it needs to be actionable. Looking to optimize their use of EAM, Candace sought out the Trapeze team to assist
Like many agencies, AAATA relied on the data from EAM for internal and NTD reports. While the out-of-the-box NTD reports helped, the challenge was the data quality. Candace knew it was important to clean up the data and establish Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). It was important for AAATA to understand what was the business issue the KPIs would address. KPIs should help increase revenue, cut costs, ease regulatory burden, improve maintenance reliability and efficiency.
Choosing a KPI without a tangible benefit to maintenance operations was not an answer. Candace needed to determine what defined a good KPI for AAATA by ensuring the inputs and outputs of the data were consistent, understanding if any upstream or downstream workflows might be affected by the data, and determining any other factors that might distort the data. Working with the Trapeze team, analyzing workflows meant constantly asking the question: Will I be able to affect change if I know the KPI target? If you answer no – why track that particular data point.
“You need to make sure you have a good process to follow. You’re measuring the process and the metric will follow the KPI.”
"Joel Black from Trapeze was the missing piece to help us drive the success of this endeavor. He immediately took an active interest in what were trying to accomplish and provided invaluable knowledge which helped us reach our goal. Using the maintenance concept of using 3 Cs ( Complaint, Cause and Correction) we adapted them into (communication, collaboration, and commitment) for a successful partnership. We could not have asked for anyone better than Joel to work with on this project.”
Candace Moore, Former Manager of Fleet Services for TheRide
AAATA focused on five KPIs that measured maintenance performance against service reliability and efficiency. These KPIs are set on a dashboard and provide alerts for the fleet manager to find out what is actually happening.
To help increase pullout availability, Percentage of Work Orders (WO) Opened by time and location or shop, measured the amount of time work orders remained in open status. By looking into factors that contribute to vehicle downtime, maintenance teams can explore more ways to improve efficiency and increase cost-effectiveness of repairs. Perhaps maintainers are waiting for parts, or the WO simply needed to be closed? Looking at this metric enables maintenance to dig deeper into the problem and look for possible solutions.
Percentage of Work Orders Opened by Class tracks scheduled work against unscheduled work, as well as road calls, and can be a lagging indicator of preventative maintenance performance. An increased percentage of unscheduled work (i.e., reactive maintenance) means breakdowns occurred more frequently, and underlying issues should be investigated. Conversely, proactive repairs reduced costs, mitigated downtime and negative impacts on operations. AAATA’s goal was to increase scheduled work versus unscheduled work and almost eliminate road calls. That would indicate that AAATA has a good preventative maintenance program which increases the safety and reliability of the fleet.
Direct vs Indirect labor is an efficiency metric that measures the amount of time employees are jobbed on working on an asset against time spent performing work activities not related to assets (e.g., attending shop meetings, cleaning the shop, or assisting inventory with counting). Agencies normally maintain a ratio of 80% direct labor to 20 % indirect labor for optimal technology utilization and staffing. Imbalances could indicate problems with workload and staffing levels. For example, a high percentage of indirect labor by service technicians might suggest overstaffing as most mechanics are typically focused on working directly on an asset.
Backlog by equipment type shows how much how much work is there waiting to be done and helps to identify staffing needs. Unaddressed backlogs – deferred work piling up – could lead to breakdowns that compromise safety and service reliability. Tracking the amount of work needed on asset groups also can help identify which assets are close to being retired or needed to be rehabilitated. Tracking this KPI helped AAATA identify additional staffing in the body shop to get ahead of the backlog and keep vehicles in good, working order.
Tracking PM Compliance not only facilitates the reporting required to regulatory bodies but identifies workload and forecast projected work. For AAATA, it provides acceptable timeframes for work and what should be done to accomplish the work needed, including scheduled repairs and addressing every single discrepancy found to preempt vehicle failures.
Finally, AAATA tracked Standard Repair Time, which is the number of labor hours to do a specific task; used to manage schedules; real-time labor capture; identify potential areas of improvement – skills training, gap in workforce, shop tooling needs. Improve production efficiency by providing an accurate estimate of time needed for scheduled work.
“It is important to communicate and share your strategies so the guys on the shop floor know what’s going on and what they needed to do to help us reach our goals.”
Tracking effective Key Performance Indicators has been critical to making the accurate data-driven decisions that improved maintenance reliability and efficiency at AAATA. KPIs are targeted and actionable, reflecting important agency goals such as staff productivity and better cost control, while being effectively measured and managed within a workflow. Crucially, maintenance staff understand how their day-to-day activities impact the number set and what actions they should take to move the needle toward that target.
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