You’ve got enough paper in your life. Paper you send to suppliers. Paper you send to customers. Monitoring your forklift usage and efficiency shouldn’t require additional stacks of paper. A Vehicle Management System (VMS), like the Toyota T-Matics option can help eliminate paper, keep you organized, and save a few trees in the process. Here are a few ways that you can use T-Matics to go paperless.

Certification and License Expiration Tracking with T-Matics:

Letting licenses and certifications lapse can be a major problem. If you’re tracking these expirations on paper, in a log, or relying on your own or someone else’s memory, you’re setting yourself up to fail. T-Matics COMMAND allows users to enter a date of expiration on the forklift certification of an operator. COMMAND alerts you when it’s time for renewed licensing and training. You can make use of this ability with both established operators and short-term temps. Also, because T-Matics monitors things like impacts, it can help you identify when re-training and certification is necessary.

Operator Historical Data:

The paper associated with tracking operator successes and missteps can be cumbersome, and often falls through the cracks. As an operator, it can be easy to get frustrated if there isn’t a clear measure of how good you really are at your job that is clearly established in writing. As a manager, keeping track of successes is difficult, especially since so much time can be spent on drawing up paperwork to document accidents and impacts.

With a VMS, both of these pain points are eliminated, making everyone happy with their work environment. If you’re a successful operator, your safe practices and focused approach to your job are documented by clear data that illustrates your forklift usage efficiency and lack of impacts on the lift. If you’re a manager, you can reward your best operators, understand who will give you the best ROI during their shifts, and identify those associates who need to shape up in terms of usage and practice.

Preventative Maintenance Made Easy and Efficient:

Trying to schedule preventive maintenance on paper is a hard task. What if you miss the date on your calendar? Worse, what if you haven’t used the lift as much as you expected when that date comes and you don’t need maintenance yet? Or what if you’ve used it more, and need maintenance before the scheduled date?

With T-Matics, computer software keeps track of time and hour usage. It then relays an automatic request for scheduled maintenance to your local Toyota dealer. No more paper scheduling, lengthy phone calls discussing timing, or missteps in maintenance intervals. Using this function can be an important step in maintaining your lifts’ uptime.

Daily Equipment Checklist:

Paper checklists are a mess to file. It’s annoying to find a hard surface to write on. And time is wasted trying to find the right office supplies to make it happen. A VMS like Toyota’s T-Matics makes this system automated and files all of these reports electronically. No more paper. Simple.

I like that VMS systems offer all of these great advantages for your company when used effectively. But it also doesn’t hurt that you can get the reputation of an environmentally conscience company with a clear understanding of your responsibility to the planet. That’s a powerful message for a whole lot of clients and customers. Going paperless with T-Matics helps you win and keep on winning.

Written by:  Linley Kullman, Telematics Support Administrator, Toyota Material Handling, USA

If you’ve heard an anecdote beginning with, “Well, so-and-so said. . .” you are likely not alone. Part of our human nature means relying on our gut instincts and, while trusting your gut is something to be proud of, doing so isn’t always appropriate. Ensuring operational efficiency and the long-term value and ROI of capital equipment such as forklifts means having a good handle on how that equipment is being used within your operation. You may have a strong hunch about how equipment is being operated, but backing up that intuition with solid data is always the way to go! A vehicle management system (VMS) is a way to make sure you’re getting the right data to help you take firm, decisive action.

Trust me, I know how overwhelming data management can seem. And the data you’ll receive from a VMS like Toyota’s T-Matics Command or T-Matics Mobile can be overwhelming – unless you establish a few clear goals right from the beginning.

I’ve found that setting up a few key goals is a great place to get started with T-Matics or any VMS. For forklift operators and managers, vehicle uptime is often the “true north” that ensures a high efficiency and ROI. Adding T-Matics to the forklifts in your fleet can help your Toyota technicians have a clearer understanding of your needs and to ensure that you have maximum uptime in your organization.

Fault Code Notifications

Fault code notifications managed via T-Matics Mobile give instant insight into forklift malfunctions to help you understand the cause behind your forklift’s breakdown. When sensors are able to discover potential problems before the affected forklift is inspected by your technicians, they’ll be better prepared by having the correct parts in hand right when they arrive, increasing their efficiency. First-time fix rate is also increased as diagnostics are constantly running in order to provide technicians the insight they need to be successful.

Planned Maintenance Intervals

The problem with calendar-based planned maintenance is its failure to show the actual needs of a forklift because it relies on ambiguous and historical understanding of usage and need. With a VMS like T-Matics, planned maintenance can be scheduled based on activity rather than on a predetermined calendar date, meaning you’ll get maintenance right when you need it.

Utilization Monitoring

When you capture data effectively, you can turn it around into information that can be handed over, clearly and accurately, to your technician. By painting a detailed picture of your forklift utilization to your technician, they will be better at anticipating any upcoming compilations and at using this information to perform accurate diagnostics on current and potential breakdowns. The more your technician knows about a forklift’s utilization, the better equipped they are to deliver the best services.

Peak Usage Monitoring

T-Matics data offers insights into when your forklifts are being used most often. Use this knowledge for improving operational efficiencies, especially since it will allow you to distinguish between login and motion hours. These insights can also give you and your technician a good understanding of when they should be working on your forklift so they don’t interrupt your operation. Planned maintenance and fixes of problems not leading to breakdown can be performed during slower periods of your operation.

Written by:  Linley Kullman, Telematics Support Administrator, Toyota Material Handling, USA