ROBIS

Rotronics is delighted to be working in partnership with the Norfolk County Council workshop management team based at Hethersett Fire Station, Norfolk. Ken Clark, Managing Director at Rotronics, has been working with Paul Symonds, Workshop Manager, since October 2018 when they met at an IMI meeting near Norwich.

The Problem
Norfolk County Council briefed Rotronics to introduce a battery management process into their workshop, to improve vehicle reliability and, specifically, the testing and charging practices. In the Council’s yellow fleet, the 54 gritters were being brought out of hibernation and the workshop team wanted to ensure that they would start first time, every time, throughout the winter months. The workshop team’s key focus was to avoid vehicle non-starts, therefore letting the region down with their gritting requirements.

Rotronics understood from the workshop that vehicle issues occurring in the workshop has previously meant that

A fleet of passenger service vehicles would contain buses and they need 24v battery sets. We know what the average battery failure and non-start rate would be within a typical fleet, from our extensive ROBIS research analysis of 21,500 buses (up to April 2019) and through our partnerships with our fleet customers.

Within an imaginary bus fleet of 100 buses, we know from the data of 700,000 tests via ROBIS (until April 2019) that around 43% of those vehicles experienced battery issues over a 12-month period and, from the same 700,000 test data, that 30% have reported non-starts in the same period. This would equate to an assumed cost of circa £200 to deal with each roadside nonstart, which would be in the region of £6,000 annually. The cost of replacing two batteries per vehicle would be additional, at a cost of around £300 for two batteries. That totals £9,000 for battery replacement costs. Add that to the non-start

We know from the data of 3,500 tests via ROBIS, that from a typical fleet of 100 fire engines, 35% would experience battery issues and 20% would experience non-starts over a twelvemonth period. This would equate to tenders being unable to leave the fire station in an emergency, with the vehicles having to be taken out of service until a technician could attend to remedy the defect. There is not only the cost of the repair, but the more pressing issue of a tender being unable to assist in an emergency.

We would expect to see roughly 8% of those 100 vehicles with a battery in a state of imminent failure. Those batteries could explode or prevent

Rotronics has been working with the Gloucestershire Fire and Rescue Services since December 2017. The workshop management team had, for some time, been looking for better ways to manage their battery maintenance within their workshop programme at their Gloucester workshop. The group previously did not have any form of effective battery management programme in place, apart from a simple battery tester.

They were aware that the Police workshop had been using a Midtronics battery tester as part of their workshop maintenance to identify faulty batteries and wanted to explore how this may help them better diagnose battery defects. Whilst the workshop had traditional 24v battery chargers in use, they did not form any part of a routine maintenance process or procedure and, as a result, balanced charging was not a consideration within their maintenance procedures.