Maintenance planner software reminds of inspections for forklifts

Hard­ly any indus­tri­al com­pa­ny for­gets reg­u­lar ser­vice and main­te­nance mea­sures for pri­ma­ry pro­duc­tion machines. But what about indus­tri­al trucks, fork­lifts and lift­ing plat­forms? If these fail due to lack of main­te­nance, this has a major impact and, in the worst case, leads to a pro­duc­tion stop. To ensure that they do not pose a dan­ger, their safe­ty must be checked at legal­ly spec­i­fied inter­vals. How­ev­er, these appoint­ments often get lost in the day-to-day busi­ness and are only attend­ed to late or not at all. To pre­vent this from hap­pen­ing, it is best to work with pro­fes­sion­al main­te­nance man­age­ment soft­ware (https://www.wartungsplaner.de).

Regard­less of whether it’s a small fam­i­ly busi­ness with just one fork­lift or a large com­pa­ny with an entire fleet of vehi­cles — pre­ven­tive main­te­nance brings great ben­e­fits. No one can afford to go with­out sup­port for pro­duc­tion and smooth oper­a­tions. From the very first day of pur­chase, a plan for inspec­tion and main­te­nance should be estab­lished and an appro­pri­ate ser­vice part­ner sought. Ini­tial main­te­nance is usu­al­ly per­formed by the man­u­fac­tur­er, but then the own­er is respon­si­ble for oper­abil­i­ty and any defects.

Timely maintenance protects against consequential damage

Some com­pa­nies feel that main­te­nance is a chore that dis­rupts the flow of oper­a­tions and pro­duc­tion, and only have the checks per­formed when repair is unavoid­able. Often, how­ev­er, the costs are so much high­er. First­ly, because the break­down of the fork­lift is not planned and so pro­duc­tion has to be stopped abrupt­ly. As a result, machines often come to a stand­still and pro­duc­tion fig­ures can­not be achieved, which costs the com­pa­ny dear­ly. On the oth­er hand, neg­li­gent main­te­nance also can­not pre­vent parts that are sub­ject to heavy stress from break­ing down and caus­ing con­se­quen­tial dam­age to the indus­tri­al truck.

There­fore, it is bet­ter to car­ry out main­te­nance in good time with a suit­able ser­vice part­ner. In this way, the ser­vice life of the fork­lift truck is extend­ed. At the same time, pro­duc­tion can be planned much bet­ter. For exam­ple, you can sched­ule a fixed day for main­te­nance for all oper­at­ing equip­ment in the com­pa­ny and you will be com­plete­ly up to date again.

Daily check ensures trouble-free operation

The employ­ees who work with fork­lifts, lift­ing plat­forms or indus­tri­al trucks on a dai­ly basis are also impor­tant sources for keep­ing up to date on the con­di­tion of this equip­ment and should def­i­nite­ly always be con­sult­ed and lis­tened to. They are most like­ly to notice if some­thing is wrong with the vehi­cle and should also per­form a dai­ly inspec­tion. Even if they are not empow­ered to make repairs, this dai­ly check goes a long way toward keep­ing oper­a­tions trou­ble-free. For exam­ple, an atten­tive employ­ee can detect wear and tear from the truck­’s nois­es and pre­vent major damage.

How often a piece of equip­ment needs to be ser­viced depends on its age, use and type of equip­ment. But not only, the own­er must also per­form legal inspec­tions that are manda­to­ry for oper­at­ing fork­lifts. After all, safe­ty in the oper­a­tion of these vehi­cles are the be-all and end-all.  Prob­a­bly no busi­ness own­er would for­give him­self if some­thing hap­pened to one of his employ­ees due to his neg­li­gence. More­over, fail­ure to do so can result in severe penal­ties. The legal­ly required inspec­tions can only be car­ried out by appro­pri­ate­ly qual­i­fied and approved com­pa­nies. It is there­fore advis­able to check whether the ser­vice part­ner has these qual­i­fi­ca­tions before sign­ing a contract.

Legally required inspections for forklifts

Six reg­u­la­tions of the Ger­man Social Acci­dent Insur­ance (DGUV) alone pre­scribe tests of fork­lifts at dif­fer­ent inter­vals. At least once a year, fork­lifts and indus­tri­al trucks must be test­ed for safe pro­vi­sion and use, and the gas sys­tem of LPG fork­lifts must be test­ed. DGUV requires test­ing for safe pro­vi­sion and use of hydraulic hose assem­blies every six months or at least once a year. Inte­grat­ed charg­ers must be checked every four years, the pres­sure of liq­uid gas tanks every ten years, and the CO con­tent in the exhaust gas of liq­uid gas fork­lifts every six months. Accord­ing to the Tech­ni­cal Rules for Haz­ardous Sub­stances (TRGS), exhaust gas mea­sure­ment for diesel fork­lifts is sched­uled once a year or every 1,500 oper­at­ing hours. Accord­ing to the Ger­man Road Traf­fic Licens­ing Reg­u­la­tions, fork­lifts with an offi­cial license plate must under­go a gen­er­al inspec­tion every two years. And last but not least, a direc­tive of the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment requires a whole-body vibra­tion mea­sure­ment for fork­lifts with ride-on capability.

Simple maintenance with intelligent software

In addi­tion to nor­mal main­te­nance and ser­vic­ing, there are a total of ten legal­ly required inspec­tions for the fork­lift, which must also be doc­u­ment­ed in accor­dance with the law. Only in this way is the com­pa­ny cov­ered for all even­tu­al­i­ties and can guar­an­tee the employ­ees the nec­es­sary occu­pa­tion­al safe­ty. It’s real­ly no won­der that you can lose track of every­thing. Above all, not every com­pa­ny has its own depart­ment for main­te­nance and repair work. This impor­tant task is then assigned to the head of pro­duc­tion, the qual­i­ty man­ag­er or anoth­er employ­ee. They are often over­whelmed by the flood of paper­work for doc­u­men­ta­tion. Even lists kept by hand or Excel spread­sheets in which the main­te­nance and inspec­tion inter­vals are entered are no guar­an­tee — after all, they have no reminder function.

But why not automate proper compliance with inspections and maintenance?

In the mean­time, there are pro­fes­sion­al soft­ware solu­tions that sig­nif­i­cant­ly sim­pli­fy the safe­ty-relat­ed main­te­nance of fork­lifts. This way, the entre­pre­neur has an overview of all inspec­tion dates, can cre­ate logs and is also remind­ed in good time of upcom­ing inspec­tions and main­te­nance. One proven solu­tion, for exam­ple, is the “Main­te­nance Plan­ner” (https://www.wartungsplaner.de) from Hoppe Unternehmens­ber­atung (https://www.Hoppe-net.de), which com­plies with the rec­om­men­da­tions of the employ­ers’ lia­bil­i­ty insur­ance asso­ci­a­tions for inspec­tion peri­od man­age­ment. All equip­ment and its main­te­nance inter­vals can be checked here with just a few clicks. An easy-to-per­form data entry makes it pos­si­ble to include every piece of equip­ment in the main­te­nance plan­ner. An inte­grat­ed cal­en­dar shows which tests and main­te­nance have to be car­ried out and when. The reminder func­tion guar­an­tees that no dead­line is missed. After­wards, the results of main­te­nance and ser­vic­ing are doc­u­ment­ed com­plete­ly paper­less in the sys­tem. The risk of fold­ers dis­ap­pear­ing or being incor­rect­ly filed no longer exists. The main­te­nance plan­ner is there­fore also an impor­tant con­tri­bu­tion to dig­i­tal doc­u­ment management.

When inspec­tions are due, for exam­ple by trade asso­ci­a­tions or trade inspec­torates, the soft­ware is a very use­ful tool for gen­er­at­ing inspec­tion reports in pdf or Word for­mat with clear graphics.

The three pillars of inspection period management — overview, planning and documentation 

They are tak­en over by the main­te­nance soft­ware and the com­pa­ny gains not only legal cer­tain­ty but also free capac­i­ties of employ­ees. Even if the main­te­nance and inspec­tion of the fork­lifts can now be done dig­i­tal­ly, the attach­ment of the inspec­tion stick­er must not be for­got­ten. There, it is pos­si­ble to see at a glance when the last main­te­nance was car­ried out and when the next one is due.

Conclusion

With a tool for main­te­nance and ser­vic­ing, every com­pa­ny is opti­mal­ly pre­pared for inspec­tions by the trade super­vi­so­ry author­i­ties. Trans­paren­cy and legal cer­tain­ty in main­te­nance and ser­vic­ing man­age­ment are ensured, occu­pa­tion­al acci­dents and the result­ing costs or employ­ee absences are reduced, as is machine or plant down­time. In this way, main­te­nance devel­ops from a pure cost fac­tor to a gen­uine val­ue-added factor.