Scania’s new flexible maintenance plans are based on connectivity and the vehicle’s actual use. The result is significantly greater maintenance precision. Every truck gets exactly the right type of maintenance at exactly the right time, yet spends less time at the workshop and more time working, compared with traditional fixed maintenance plans regulated by the calendar or distance travelled.
Imagine if your trucks could tell the workshop when they needed a service. Well, now they can.
And thanks to the Scania Communicator, which monitors hundreds of parameters within the powertrain and overall vehicle systems, the days of expensive surprises in the workshop should also be over.
Armed with data uploads and even remote on-the-go diagnosis, by the time your truck pulls into the workshop, not only will the Scania service advisors and technicians know what needs replacing, they should have the parts ready in the work bay, helping to speed the truck’s return to the road.
Scania Maintenance with Flexible Plans: a step-change for the good
Scania in Australia is rolling out its new data-driven service concept called Scania Maintenance with Flexible Plans.
Scania believes the way vehicles are scheduled for serviced has barely changed since the introduction of the famed 3-series in the late 1980s, and so the revolution is well overdue.
Over the past 30 years, while the focus on improving fuel efficiency has endured, operating environment priorities have changed as much as the on-board technology has evolved. Now maintenance makes a step-change for the good.
Scania Maintenance with Flexible Plans provides the customer with the option to have servicing intervals set to meet the exact needs of each truck, determined by how it is used, what loads it carries, and over what terrain.
Data drawn from vehicle operation plays a critical role in determining servicing interval requirements. Better use can be made of advanced lubricants. Under the right conditions oil change intervals can be lengthened to up to 150,000 km, distances unheard of, and in fact, inconceivable, in the past.
Introducing Scania’s National Service Scheduling Team
From the operator’s perspective, the service planning function can now be passed to Scania’s National Service Scheduling Team who will be monitoring data fed from the Scania Communicator. The data indicates when maintenance, repairs or replacement parts are due. And this impulse for service comes directly from each vehicle’s activity data.
There are more than 200,000 connected Scania vehicles on the road throughout the world, and at least 2000 in Australia. With 3G and 4G compatible Communicators now installed in new Scania vehicles, the company has a mass of real-time, real-world data that can be analysed and interrogated to provide reliable information regarding service scheduling.
Scania began rolling out Scania Maintenance with Flexible Plans across Europe more than one year ago.
Usage, not calendars or km, determine service requirements
“Scania Maintenance with Flexible Plans is based on the idea that all trucks are connected and it is their actual usage data, rather than the traditional mileage or calendar method, which determines how they are to be serviced, according to the specific maintenance contract between Scania and the individual customer,” says Sean Corby, Scania Australia National Manager After Sales.
“This may mean that oil-change intervals could be as far apart as 150,000 km, provided the operating conditions are suitable and so long as Scania’s long-life oil is used.
“There are obvious customer benefits in this, such as significant potential for fewer and/or shorter visits to the workshop,” he says.
“As the vehicle is utilised we can download the data to ensure its expected servicing needs are in line with the real-world operational data we are seeing. In this way if an operator takes a regional multi-drop prime mover onto overnight express interstate work, we can modify the servicing schedule almost in real time to accommodate its new role.
“If the customer starts running the truck down very poorly maintained roads we can adjust the axle maintenance programme to accommodate this. We can do the same with dusty operating conditions or extreme heat,” Sean says.
“Rather than customers having to keep track of and accommodate fixed service intervals, Scania will contact them to arrange a suitable time to visit the workshop.
“If you then connect additional services, such as Remote Diagnostics, we can be proactive in our relationship with the customer and improve their chances of keeping their vehicle at work through planned and preventive maintenance,” Sean says.
The right amount of service at the right time
Correctly calibrating maintenance has a major impact on important whole-of-life factors such as availability and resale values.
A vehicle that receives exactly the right amount of service, at the right time, will be working longer, and generating revenue for more days, and retain its residual value better.
“We know that in the past, before vehicles were connected, trucks and buses may have been both over-serviced and under-serviced. The era of the ‘one-size-fits-all’ maintenance programme has passed with the arrival of Scania Maintenance with Flexible Plans,” Sean says.
Scania has traditionally broken down the servicing task into Small, Medium and Large, depending on km travelled. But as technology has evolved and new filters have been added to the powertrain, their service lives may not fit within the SML programmes.
“A particulate filter typically has a working life longer than the Large service interval, but unnecessarily changing out the particulate filter to meet the SML scheduling adds unnecessary costs for the operator, and means filters are changed when they still have good service life left in them,” Sean says.
“No-one would argue with aiming to provide exactly the right amount of maintenance per vehicle.
“Scania Maintenance with Flexible Plans means we can take Scania Maintenance to an entirely new level,” says Claes Åkerlund, Head of Service Concepts at Scania in Sweden.
It is also possible to efficiently combine various service operations and perform preventive maintenance in order to reduce the time that the vehicle is idle, to maximise uptime and revenue possibilities. Unplanned visits to the workshop between service appointments can be minimised, which also facilitates the work of transport planners.
Scania has already rolled out the Flexible Plans concept across its 900 workshops in Europe. Norway has been one of the pilot markets, and customer feedback has been extremely positive; haulage companies appreciate Scania’s willingness to shoulder the responsibility for planning, and they also recognise that the number of workshop visits has decreased in general.
“There is a very high degree of reliability, and we can determine the actual need for service with a great deal of precision,” Claes says. “The (previous concept of) set maintenance plans resulted in vehicles being serviced too frequently or too infrequently. The best scenario is when every vehicle receives the exact amount of maintenance it needs.”
Differing usage means a different service plan
As an example, a vehicle running across Cunningham’s Gap in Queensland’s and through the Toowoomba Ranges on a daily basis might cover the same number of km per month as a vehicle running Sydney to Melbourne, but the operating environment and the loading may be entirely different,” says Sean Corby.
“With Scania Maintenance with Flexible Plans we can be more focused on how we maintain our customers’ vehicles, taking into account a high degree of detail of their operating environment, payload and topography.”
While Scania will be rolling out the Flexible Plan concept to its customers, there may be some who wish to remain with the set periodic system, and they of course will continue to be accommodated by Scania After Sales across the country.
“Scania in Australia has adopted the concept of Flexible Plans because the data collection is sophisticated enough to take account of Australian operating conditions,” Sean says.
“This ranges from extreme heat soak and high cruising speeds to heavier payloads and poorly maintained roads. In addition we can see that there is the potential to reduce operators’ running costs while at the same time enhancing their uptime levels, reducing the potential for unplanned stops; giving them the ability to earn more money while the wheels are turning.
“Our aim is to break down the SML service planning into smaller blocks focusing on which elements of the vehicle require more frequent or less frequent attention,” Sean says.
“We also have the ability to tailor servicing schedules to meet customer specific requirements, because they may feel more comfortable changing the oil at a set time, even if our data does not require this.
“We are also able to integrate maintenance of specialist bodies or trailers into the plan too, to ensure the entire combination remains in as good a working order as possible throughout its working life,” Sean says.
Keeping the Communicator talking
With the impending demise of the 2G Network in Australia, Scania is offering existing Communicator customers a free upgrade to a new ‘Black Box’, which can utilise the 3G and 4G Networks. The new Communicator can be installed at the operators’ convenience or during the next service call at the workshop.
Full details of the new Scania Maintenance with Flexible Plans concept can be downloaded from the Scania Australia website (www.scania.com.au), or are available from Scania Branches nationwide.
