Digitizing preventive maintenance to minimize car wash downtimes
What is the worst thing that can happen to a car wash?
For Nick Haase, co-founder of MaintainX, a software solutions provider that helps a wide range of businesses streamline maintenance, maximize equipment uptime, it is when a customer shows up to have their car washed and the operation is down.
“If they find that the car wash and its equipment is down, they are very likely to go across the street or down to the block to another car wash and you’ve lost that business, maybe even that customer,” he says. “Every minute that their tunnel is offline puts recurring revenue and customer trust at risk. So, it becomes important to the operators that they understand how to limit downtime, especially unplanned downtime, as much as possible.”
To prevent such unplanned downtimes, car wash operations need to regularly maintain their equipment and to ensure that needed car wash cleaners are on hand. Think of it in the same way as one does about maintaining a vehicle. The best way to prevent unwanted and often expensive breakdowns is to take a preventive maintenance approach to one’s car: changing oil, filters and other fluids, regular inspections of all components throughout the car and replacing any worn parts before they fail. Doing so ensures that one does not find themselves stranded on the side of the road.
It is the same with car wash operations, adds Haase. As an example, he spoke about vacuum hoses. These, he notes, are notoriously prone to breaking down because they are use quite frequently, and customer become frustrated when they find that the hose broken, or the vacuum system not working.
“A broken hose or vacuum system often leaves a customer angry and frustrated,” he continues. “It may sound trivial, but a broken hose can be the difference between a customer who leaves your tunnel car wash operation happy with their experience, or someone who goes across the street to your competitor. So that challenge is to do that preventive maintenance to get ahead of breakdowns.”
The challenge to doing so comes down to several factors. The most common is that many car wash operations do not have in place a workable maintenance plan based on how often equipment is used and what are the schedules for periodic inspection and part replacement recommended by the manufacturers for equipment. Another is there are no procedures in place for inspections, or whose responsibility it is to check equipment and supplies. To make things worse, even if such processes are in place, documentation is incomplete, often left to someone to write down on paper spreadsheets or documented in an inconsistent manner.
All this means car wash operations caught flat-footed when a breakdown happens and the staff scrambles to identify the problem and then working to get needed replacement parts or service professionals to come in to make the needed repairs.
And during that time the car wash is idle with customers and revenue going somewhere else.
That is where MaintainX comes in according to Haase. It moves maintenance in a car wash from relying on paper records to a digital platform that can used on any tablet device. A simplified user interface makes it easy for car wash staff to input equipment and supply information and then create maintenance schedules for equipment and regular inventory checks of supplies. Real-time reporting allows staff to better maintain and update maintenance records and to create work audits to keep track of all completed and upcoming inspection and maintenance work; and to assign such work to be during times that minimize disruptions to the car wash operations.
“Some more sophisticated car wash operations have connected their water metres to MaintainX so they can see how much water they are using, and if there is a break or leak in a line someplace, they get an immediate notification and can create a work order and action to fix it, including pulling up troubleshooting steps that staff can follow to take immediate action to shut down the line and such,” Haase says.
He goes back again to the example of taking care of one’s automobile. Changing the oil at prescribed change intervals may not be exciting and may strike some as an annoyance. “You many do not see your car moving faster because of that oil change, but if you don’t change that oil regularly you are going to be paying for that later, and it will be very expensive,” he adds. “It is the same with your equipment in the tunnel. If you do not take care of it and inspect and replace parts when needed, you will extend the life and investment made in that equipment.”
