Don t buy on price tag alone. The key, he says, is to look at the value of the product instead of the cost. We consider our PM program to be scheduled work. We don t want any unscheduled work between PM checkups, so we avoid cheap parts. Keep good records.
Good records allow managers to compare products and procedures.
Developing the habit of consistently recording PM data and noting any small problems provides you the raw numbers to use in evaluating costs. Savvy maintenance managers know how much it costs to operate their buses, whether the numbers are expressed per bus, per mile, per day or per month. Laptop computers are finding their way onto the garage floor as diagnostic tools and record-keeping devices. Elsewhere in the maintenance shop, computerized bar-coding can simplify parts inventory. According to Pierce, taking inventory of the company s parts by hand-counting took three days.