Increasing Your Fleets Reliability: Practical Recommendations Using Preventative Maintenance

In this article I'll explore how MSX International 's latest customer success story is about how a multinational e-commerce giant managed to enhance fleet reliability and reduce maintenance costs through advanced preventative maintenance strategies. To gain further insight into this ground-breaking topic, I spoke to Felipe Cruz , Global Solutions Leader at MSX, who provided valuable perspectives on the importance of efficient maintenance solutions.

Addressing rising costs and inefficiencies in fleet maintenance

Our customer operates a vast fleet of up to 70,000 vehicles in the United States, supporting the critical last-mile delivery network. With such a large fleet, maintenance costs can be extremely high, and efficient fleet management is essential to keep operations running smoothly. They approached MSX seeking help to gain clarity on future financial impact - fleet vehicle’s warranties being in a continuous cycle of expiration - of operations as well as improving their overall vehicle reliability through advanced maintenance strategies.

Felipe emphasized the critical role of efficient maintenance solutions for companies managing a vast number of vehicles, each with unique maintenance requirements and schedules. "Efficient maintenance solutions ensure that vehicles are serviced promptly and effectively, reducing the risk of unexpected breakdowns and costly repairs," he explains.

Leveraging advanced risk modeling and OEM data for optimized maintenance

We approached the client’s logistics team with a data-driven, advanced risk modeling solution that leveraged our expertise and experience working with OEMs to obtain critical warranty data. The solution combined statistical techniques—specifically a reliability analysis—with practical recommendations for vehicle maintenance.

Felipe highlighted the importance of data-driven approaches: "By collecting warranty data from OEMs, we were able to understand failure modes and maintenance requirements for each vehicle model in the fleet. This allowed us to create reliability models for major vehicle components, employing survival analysis to predict failure risks over time."

The study provided visibility to increased repair costs post-warranty and presented the client with the potential to reduce unplanned repairs. With a clear understanding of these risks, MSX developed a detailed preventative maintenance schedule, proposing timely, cost-effective interventions for critical components.

Early benefits of a preventative maintenance model

While the full preventative maintenance strategy is working through implementation, the results from our model have already provided significant insights.

Felipe notes, "Our calculations indicated that without preventative measures, our client would face a 227% increase in repair costs once warranties expired. While this increase cannot be substantially reduced, our focus is on making this out-of-warranty jump as small as possible. Our preventative maintenance schedule provided a clear path to reducing these future liabilities."

By following just one of the recommendations we presented for instance, they will be able to avoid an estimated $13 million in spend annually (by reducing the frequency and cost of major repairs in critical vehicle components). The reliability modeling showed that implementing our maintenance schedule would significantly improve vehicle reliability, leading to less downtime and more efficient operations.

The foundation for long-term savings

The project has provided our client with a clear understanding of future maintenance costs and the advantages of a structured preventative maintenance plan. The methodology and tools we provided give them a solid foundation to continue optimizing their fleet management strategy. Felipe parting thoughts were, "This project exemplifies the power of data-driven decision-making in fleet management. By combining advanced risk modeling and preventative maintenance strategies, we provided this organization with the tools to optimize their fleet maintenance, reduce operational costs, and enhance vehicle reliability. Although the full operational results are yet to be realized, the financial and strategic framework we’ve put in place gives them a clear path to achieving long-term savings and efficiency gains."

Want to know how we can support your success utilizing AI / machine learning to produce predictive maintenance models, and with the power of the broader global footprint of MSX, help execute the changes to your organization? Please reach out to me and we can discuss what success looks like.