Service24h with telediagnosis ensures you're back on the road in no time
Service
If the technician carries the right part, irritating downtimes can be drastically reduced. Service24h with telediagnosis makes this possible.
Stranded: Hans-Jürgen Leisner calls the Service24h Hotline at the Customer Assistance Center (CAC) on 00800 5 777 7777 because the engine fault lamp has come on and his truck has switched to the emergency engine operating mode. During the call, he follows the instructions of the CAC employee and presses the button with the spanner symbol on the FleetBoard unit – telediagnosis starts.
Hans-Jürgen Leisner has been in the job for almost 40 years. He's experienced the odd breakdown here or there. "Although it doesn't happen very often, it always happens at completely the wrong time", says the Bavarian. Such as at minus temperatures or when there's a sleet shower.
Hans-Jürgen drives for Wittwer Spedition und Logistik GmbH from Eschenlohe near Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Their 136 tractor units carry out around 20,000 tours per year. The fact that the vehicles almost never break down has, among other things, to do with the age of the Wittwer fleet, in which the average vehicle age is 1.5 years. Meanwhile, the company's fleet of trucks is made up by around 40 percent of vehicles bearing a three-pointed star.
When a vehicle is out of service, it's often the result of a force majeure. In such situations, it's imperative to get the vehicle back on the road as quickly as possible. Among other things, Hans-Jürgen transports goods in his Actros 1851 for the paper industry, where maintaining vast stocks of goods is a thing of the past. Production is carried out according to the just-in-time principle. If something goes wrong during the transport phase, a million-pound press might come to a stop somewhere else.
To improve vehicle availability, Wittwer uses Service24h with telediagnosis. Using the FleetBoard telematics service, a short diagnostics check of the stricken truck can be carried out with ease. So, even before the Service24h technician leaves the yard, it's often already clear what's wrong with the vehicle. The technician can thus comfortably prepare for the required repair work and ensure that the right spare parts and tools are taken along to the scene. Should telediagnosis show that the truck can only be repaired in the workshop, the technician immediately informs the recovery agent instead of driving to the scene unnecessarily. And that, too, saves valuable time.
"Recently, I had a case in which Service24h with telediagnosis
showed its true value", explains Hans-Jürgen. Before leaving the
dealership, the technician discovered that a sensor had malfunctioned
and before setting out to the scene of the breakdown, already took the
right component along with him. "An hour later, my truck was back
on the road. In the past, the technician would have had to return to
the dealership to pick up the spare part."
Spare part on-hand: The protocol of the short diagnosis check of the truck is sent by the CAC to Service24h mechanic Sebastian Schunk. The truck mechatronics technician reads in the error protocol that a sensor has malfunctioned in the exhaust gas aftertreatment system and caused the engine to switch to emergency operating mode. He takes the appropriate spare part and arrives a short time later at the location of the truck which has broken down.
Hans-Jürgen and his colleagues don't only transport goods from the
paper industry. They also transport waste materials, such as building
rubble contaminated with asbestos, to their final destination for
disposal. In order to carry out such operations, the logistics company
doesn't just have the appropriate trailers, but it also has the
necessary licences and insurance policies. That said, not all of their
tractor units have these approvals. So if a truck does fall out of
action, they can't simply send out a replacement vehicle. It therefore
means that the tractor unit with the breakdown has to be made
operational again as quickly as possible. If, however, it is a truck
from Mercedes-Benz, Service24h with telediagnosis is a really big
help.
Back on the road in no time: To change the sensor, the mechanic only needed 15 minutes. Just an hour after calling the Service24h hotline, the problem is resolved. Saving valuable time by using telediagnosis even means that Hans-Jürgen Leisner can drive his Actros to the customer and deliver the load within the specified time frame.
A modern fleet with this type of service is one of the recipes for success of the Wittwer haulage company, which monitors its entire fleet – including vehicles from other manufacturers – using FleetBoard. Hans-Jürgen goes on to say that: "Telediagnosis is only available for Mercedes-Benz Trucks and it isn't a FleetBoard service. But, this innovative service is only possible thanks to FleetBoard. I'm definitely a fan of this telematics solution!"
Photos: Matthias Aletsee
Comment
Please log in to post a comment.
No comments yet