Challenge
Kmart Tyre and Auto Services have over 250 stores Australia-wide. Making sure all equipment in the store is up to date on maintenance and working correctly is a critical daily task of the store employee.
If equipment is not functioning correctly store personnel had to call or email and log a maintenance request with the head office. This was a manual process that KTAS wanted to improve.
One other important process done manually was scheduling routine maintenance for all types of equipment for all stores. This was a massive process to be checked manually and informed of the needful service provide.
Solution
Keeping in mind that automation of the manual process will be the key to coming up with a great solution, we broke the processes into pieces and executed them separately.
Scheduled maintenance was handled first. All schedules for maintenance records were updated in a separate master database called MoveX. We created a separate program using open source PHP to read all schedule data from the MoveX system. Then we applied the needful logic so the program will decide on whether to log a maintenance ticket, per store, per equipment.
This program was scheduled to execute automatically using a cron service every day. This resolved a massive workload as currently all scheduled maintenance requests are automatically logged into the system. They are also reflected on the maintenance application in a separate tab which will enable the store personnel and KTAS management to easily manage maintenance done by service contractors.
Managing the equipment checks was the next challenge, we added a new module to the CRM which can store all the equipment checks on the system. Once this was developed we created a new equipment check section for the custom maintenance application.
This section enables store personnel to conduct an equipment check for all types of equipment in the store on a daily, weekly, and on monthly basis. The type of questions and equipment change according to the check type which is daily, weekly and monthly.
Users are able to specify whether there is a fault on the equipment or not and submit the check result. The results will be saved in real time on to the CRM which will enable the management users to view and take action immediately.
KTAS management can directly add a maintenance ticket for urgent equipment issues logged on the maintenance check using the CRM.
Results
The system has been live for more than 2 years now and the result it brings to KTAS is great.
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- Automating a long manual process reduced employees’ workload which they can use for betterment in other areas
- CRON made the scheduling of maintenance easier and made the process smooth
- The time to address critical equipment issues affecting the daily function of the store was reduced
- Detailed reports helped to get better store equipment