Heavy Duty Trucking magazine names Gregg Mangione, senior vice president of maintenance at Penske Truck Leasing, a 2019 Truck Fleet Innovator.
Gregg Mangione, senior vice president of maintenance at Penske Truck Leasing
According to Heavy Duty Trucking magazine, each year editors review nominations to select four or more fleet executives who have consistently shown innovation in areas such as leadership, productivity, business practices, safety, maintenance, spec'ing, technology, human resources, fuel efficiency and the environment.
Penske and Mangione are being recognized for digitizing Penske’s truck preventive maintenance processes. In early 2018, the company announced the implementation of a fully digital and voice-directed truck fleet preventive maintenance process for its fleet of more than 311,000 vehicles. This high-precision platform allows Penske to execute its Dynamic PM®, which optimizes the preventive maintenance inspection to an individual vehicle’s attributes and point in its lifecycle.
The system is part of Penske’s maintenance technology infrastructure in use across all Penske and customer truck fleet maintenance facilities in North America. It includes Penske’s proprietary application, ServiceNet, running on rugged mobile tablet devices for maintenance technicians; and the ability to stay connected for on-site applications.
“We are honored to be recognized by Heavy Duty Trucking magazine as a Fleet Innovator,” said Mangione. “We are extremely proud of the work we’ve done to digitize our preventive maintenance processes in order to improve accuracy and consistency while reducing and eliminating paperwork, and ensuring documentation and compliance with regulations. Implementing this game-changing software was a team effort and this recognition is a testament to the hard work of everyone involved.”
By Kim Harmsen
Penske Truck Leasing has successfully completed its 1 millionth voice-directed preventive maintenance inspection using its recently deployed innovative paperless technology.
“Our new approach to a voice-guided preventive maintenance process is exceeding our expectations for shop productivity and customer uptime,” said Gregg Mangione, senior vice president of maintenance at Penske Truck Leasing.
Over the last year, Penske implemented its voice-directed preventive maintenance processes for its fleet of more than 270,000 vehicles. The pioneering approach improves inspection and repair accuracy and consistency while also eliminating paperwork and ensuring full documentation and compliance with regulations.
“Our technicians have been instrumental in the success of this new process,” added Mangione. “Providing them with a hands-free solution at the point of repair and removing repetitive handwriting and keying has made their jobs easier, while at the same time improving the quality of the inspections, resulting in improved uptime for our customers.”
Penske commemorated the milestone by honoring David Barba, a Phoenix-based technician, who performed the 1 millionth preventive maintenance inspection on a 2018 Freightliner Sleeper Tractor.
Penske’s innovative voice-directed preventive maintenance system provides its technicians everything they need at the point of repair — reducing wasted time, motion and manual keying. It taps a robust, high-speed indoor and outdoor gigabit Wi-Fi network and uses rugged mobile tablet devices for its technicians and industry-leading diagnostic tools. The system provides voice prompts via a headset to direct technicians through a preventive maintenance inspection. It is the foundation of Penske’s proprietary preventive maintenance process, providing the ability to tailor inspections to the specific vehicle, its age, specifications and technologies now and in the future.
By Kim Harmsen
Pictured from left to right are Penske Truck Leasing associates Gregg Mangione, senior vice president of maintenance; Tony Popple, senior director of maintenance; David Barba, technician; John Marvin, district manager.
Penske Truck Leasing has implemented fully digital and voice-directed truck fleet preventive maintenance processes for its fleet of more than 266,000 vehicles. Penske’s innovative digital preventive maintenance approach improves accuracy and consistency while also reducing and eliminating paperwork, and ensuring documentation and compliance with regulations.
“Our approach uniquely positions Penske to care for and maintain the increasingly complex vehicles on the market today, and the emerging vehicle technologies that will be part of the trucking industry in only a few years,” said Gregg Mangione, senior vice president of maintenance at Penske Truck Leasing. “We’re putting the technology our technicians need to work smarter and faster right at the point of repair to keep our customers and their businesses moving forward.”
The system in use across Penske’s expansive network of truck fleet maintenance facilities in North America taps into a robust, high-speed Aruba indoor and outdoor gigabit Wi-Fi network; uses rugged mobile tablet devices for maintenance technicians; and supplemented with an innovative voice-directed preventive maintenance system.
Penske Truck Leasing, Honeywell Safety and Productivity Solutions, and Vitech collaborated on the design of a voice-directed preventive maintenance system that leverages a fully customized version of Honeywell’s Voice Maintenance & Inspection (M&I) solution. Vitech supported Penske’s world-class project team as they implemented the solution for hundreds of locations and thousands of users. Vitech continues to support the solution and provide enhancements to further drive value from voice.
“We were first introduced to Penske through their logistics business unit in 2012, where we implemented voice to support their picking procedures. They experienced tremendous benefits early on and expressed a desire to explore using the technology for preventive maintenance. Penske’s foresight and intuition regarding the use of voice-directed technology in their maintenance operations have enabled them to take a leadership position in the industry,” said Gary Oldham, vice president of sales for Vitech Business Group.
The system provides voice prompts via a headset to direct maintenance technicians through a preventive maintenance (PM) inspection. It is the foundation of Penske’s proprietary PM process, providing the ability to tailor inspections to the specific vehicle, its age, specifications and technologies now and in the future.
“With this solution, workers make fewer errors, have higher job satisfaction rates and are more productive,” said Taylor Smith, president of Honeywell’s Workflow Solutions business. “By leveraging our industry-leading voice technology that has improved distribution center operations for more than 25 years, Penske is elevating the level of service that it delivers to its customers. Penske’s transportation expertise and Honeywell’s software and hardware are delivering gains in compliance, quality and productivity.”
By Kim Harmsen
Truckers and carriers are always seeking ways to maximize fuel economy, and spec’ing your vehicle properly for the application it will run in 80% of the time is a great way to start. However, once you do so, proper maintenance plays a big role in maintaining that fuel economy.
For vehicles that spend most of their time on the highway, aerodynamics plays an important part in improving fuel economy. It is critical to keeping devices secure and in good condition, repair damage, and maintain proper tire inflation. Tires running just 10 pounds underinflated can impact fuel economy by as much as 1%. Check tire pressures every time you have a unit in the service bay for any type of repair. Inspect tires for irregular wear, which can be caused by misalignment.
A good preventive maintenance program can maintain good engine performance and contribute to fuel economy:
Validate engine parameters -- such as road and cruise speeds and especially idle shutdown -- when performing preventive maintenance. Also, check for various software updates. Many of these updates improve vehicle reliability, regens and fuel economy.
This guest blog post was contributed by Mike Hasinec, vice president of maintenance systems & support at Penske Truck Leasing.