Spring 2006

However paperless the rest of your transport operation might be, you could argue that vehicle service records have until now remained, relatively speaking, in the dark ages. The Vehicle Operator and Services Agency demands that all fleet operators keep service records for all of their vehicles for 18 months. Since six-weekly inspections are mandatory, the paperwork can soon build up.

Iveco claims to have become the first truck manufacturer to help its customers get away from this paper chase. It is offering its customers a paperless vehicle records system called Advisor, which has been developed in collaboration with applications and computing specialist FDTEK.

This electronic records system has been approved by VOSA as complying with its vehicle maintenance record requirements. The records are held on FDTEK's own secure servers, and can be downloaded when required on to mobile units or to a PC. Operators simply pay £2 per inspection sheet to log it online.

Eventually, Iveco plans to install software that will take vehicle technicians through the whole inspection process, using the same Palm-based handheld devices that are used to run the FDTEK application.

 

UK customer services manager Mark Thompson points out that there are currently seventeen different service sheets, from which users have to select the correct combination according to the vehicle and the type of service. They then need three copies of each.

In addition to meeting legal requirements, Thompson believes an electronic approach will help users to keep track of non-critical faults (those that can be fixed later), and to monitor more closely wearing items such as brake pads, prolonging life without compromising safe operation of the vehicle.