With more than 25 years serving the transit market place, and more than 80 customers focused on public transportation, MAXIMUS has firsthand experience in what trends drive customer deployment of technology.
Ease-of-Use/ Depth and Breadth
As public transportation moves from reactive to proactive maintenance systems, managers want both the depth to track and analyze all aspects of the operation and the ease-of-use to ensure data is entered timely and correctly. We see a trend moving toward easy-to-use, shop floor-focused interfaces, which are used for real-time labor capture, to give the technicians more information at their finger tips. MAXIMUS has spent a considerable amount of effort developing easy-to-use role-based touch screen portals to help manage this balance. So, if you log in as a bus technician, the system serves up, on one screen, everything you need to do your job. A technician should be up and running on a shop floor system with an hour or less of training.
Transit systems, both large and small, want to take advantage of the advancements others have made to best-of-breed software. Maintenance departments shouldn’t have to rely on their IT staff to spend thousands of man hours configuring a “generic” EAM software package to fit the specific needs for bus and rail transits.
Integration of Automated Fueling Systems
Fuel continues to be a larger share of the cost for a transit organization. Without proper tracking of both the fuel used and the individual vehicle fuel consumption, there is no way to look at cost reductions. With real-time integration to your automated fueling system via your maintenance management application, fuel can be treated as a key inventory item. By incorporating an automated odometer reading, your fuel system can assist with PM compliance via accurate meter reads. The increasing number of organizations that have acted on this realization is quite apparent; each has demonstrated significant operational efficiencies by leveraging this touch point.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Dashboard KPIs are changing the way maintenance departments see and react to information. Instead of running many large reports and then pouring over the information with a highlighter, today’s systems will serve up information via dashboards and alerts in real time. In other words, a value-added system will show you the current health of the operation and alert you when something you care about is out of tolerance. Color-coded areas and data indicators in the gauges represent real-time information, which quickly allows maintenance managers to see which way the fleet is moving and take necessary action. In addition, KPIs are an excellent tool for executive management to see the overall readiness and availability of fleet assets and the ability to provide transportation services.
Summary
As our transit and commuter rail customers continue to expand their use of technology to manage physical assets, they push us to deliver our applications in the way they want to use them. Through our focus on ease-of-use and best-of-breed functionality, delivering an integrated automated fueling system, and out-of-the-box analytics, dashboards and notification capabilities, we stay in front of our customers expectations.
Biography
Mr. Hines has more than 30 years experience in asset maintenance management software. Mr. Hines has continuously applied new technologies to MAXIMUS’ fleet, fuel and facility management solutions. He has taken asset management software from mainframe to the Web, and paper on the shop to touch screens and wireless mobile technology. His dedication to meeting the current and emerging needs of customers has enabled MAXIMUS to offer complete turnkey solutions and superior service and support.
