Preventive Maintenance Programs

CHALLENGE:  A luxury retail chain customer was having issues with repeated service calls due to issues with their stores' entryways.  Their growth in number of locations along with their reactive approach to maintaining their doors led to an exponential increase in service spend.

This customer approached us to find a way to lower these costs.  Since we have been working with this company for several years, throughout their expansion, we were able to review and analyze their service records to look for any repeated issues that could be controlled.

ACTION: We visited multiple locations, spoke with store employees and inspected some of the issues we uncovered from data mining their service records.  We discovered most of their spend was on emergency service calls resulting from the inoperable gates and the employee interviews and inspected gates revealed that minor damage was not being reported and fixed.  These damages compounded over time and inevitably lead to product failure. This reactive approach meant excessive emergency repairs, profit killing down time, potential liability issues and exorbitant costs, not only for the emergency repairs, but to hire a security guard to protect the store when the gate was not operable. We advised our client that this approach was not cost effective and recommended a Preventative Maintenance Program.

RESULT: With our newly implemented Preventative Maintenance Program, our client discovered why being prepared for the unexpected isn’t only cheaper, it’s more effective.  Their gates were being maintained regularly leading to a properly working product with little chance of failure.  They no longer had an excessive amount of emergency service repairs and the gate was able to protect the store as it is supposed to.  The chain’s facilities managers were happier too because they saw a decrease in their annual service spend and more importantly, they, along with the store employees, had more confidence in the gates and experienced less stress due to a decrease in emergency service.  Our Preventive Maintenance Program consisted of planned facility visits by our trusted Cornell technicians to examine the gates and address any issues.  Huge replacements became minor repairs, day-long repairs became fast and efficient check-ups. Not only were they saving time, they were saving money.  After implementing our proactive Preventative Maintenance Program, our client’s average service call cost was reduced by 65% and their annual number of service calls reduced by 30%!  After we reported these updated service records to our client, they were ecstatic and finally realized how a proactive approach to such a vital asset can help them reduce their service spend and their level of stress.