VMRS Adoption Seen as Critical to Solving Parts Inefficiencies
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Getting manufacturers in the trucking industry to adopt Vehicle Maintenance Reporting Standards, or VMRS, is currently under way and would go a long way toward greatly improving efficiencies in the parts supply chain, industry experts say.
Developed by American Trucking Associations’ Technology & Maintenance Council, VMRS is the universal language of maintenance reporting — “the vital link between the shop floor and management,” according to a promotional brochure.
VMRS helps create a single process to document when, why and how maintenance is performed on equipment, to improve equipment and parts inventory control and to identify where money is spent, the brochure says.
VMRS has been in use by almost every major fleet internally throughout the United States, Jack Poster, VMRS services manager with TMC, said at TMC’s annual meeting. The fleet maintenance software providers also use it, he said.
However, the manufacturers “are leaning towards it but haven’t adopted it,” he said, adding that it’s mainly the second- and third-tier manufacturers who they want to adopt it.
The fleets “are speaking” VMRS, so the manufacturers also should be, Poster said. “That would make life easier,” he said, adding that truck OEMs Paccar and Freightliner have adopted it.
Poster served as moderator of a TMC session titled, “The Application of VMRS to the Parts Supply Chain and How It Helps Fleets.”
TMC is joining forces with the Auto Care Association to make what’s called a “super standard” that involves the manufacturing side, including VMRS, so it’s appealing to manufacturers, Poster said.
Light-duty has been using the Auto Care Association’s code standards for a while, he said, adding that its heavy-duty division wants to work with TMC on this super standard that covers everybody.
Sheila Andrews, director of government affairs with HDDA, the heavy-duty segment of the Auto Care Association, one of the panelists on the session, said there is a lot of inefficiency in the heavy-duty parts industry.
Sheila Andrews by John Sommers II for TT“Fleets are missing a lot of important information from parts manufacturers,” she said, noting they need to ensure they get “the right part at the right time at the right place.”
As a result, “we are looking to create a parts data standard that begins with manufacturers all speaking the same language and communicating their parts data out the same way first so the end customer has all of the information they need to order the right parts, make sure that they are decreasing bay time, increasing uptime and don’t have to suffer some of the burdens of increased returns or the wrong price on parts orders,” she said.
Andrews said a heavy duty parts distributor in South Carolina encountered a recent issue where it needed to order a customer 125 feet of hose. When their counter staff went into their system and ordered what they thought was the quantity from the manufacturer — 125 feet — “there was what we call a data synchronization issue —because a product data standard didn’t exist,” she said.
The information the counter staff was seeing was different from what the manufacturer actually provides for that particular hose, she said. A few days after ordering the 125 feet of hose, “they actually received 125 rolls of hose, which meant that the manufacturer had shipped this one distributor all of their quantity of that particular product so every single other person trying to order that hose had to be backordered,” Andrews said. The distributor then had to figure out a way to sell the extra hose or return it to the manufacturer.
It’s at the point where members of the heavy-duty parts industry are now interested in providing the data because they see the efficiencies that it can create for them and want to provide those efficiencies to their end customers and fleets, she said.
Poster said the trucking industry is already well aware of driver and technician shortages. But there also is a shortage of parts. "The reason there is a shortage of parts ... is because the data is wrong,” he said.
“If you’re in heavy-duty, you can’t run down to the AutoZone at the end of the block all the time and make sure they’re going to have the part — because it’s so specialized,” he said.
He cited what he called a prime example of the problem. You could be working on an engine and putting in hundreds of dollars of parts, but there might be a $25 bearing or other part that no one has in the Tri-State area. “What happens? That vehicle sits,” he said.
“Time is money,” Poster said. “We have to get the product to market.”
If the manufacturers would adopt VMRS, it would be easier for fleets to look up parts and have that standardization, Poster said.
Andrews, meanwhile, said a great example of how standards are helpful is in the grocery industry. If you go into any grocery store or buy produce at a 7-11 store, “a lime will always be coded 4048,” regardless of where it is bought.
“That is what we are looking to do with heavy-duty parts,” Andrews said: “That you know 100% of the time the Allison Transmission that is in your fleet is always going to be coded with a particular parts standard.” Going forward, Auto Care, under its heavy-duty segment HDDA, is aiming to create the standard in partnership with TMC, Andrews said. VMRS is one aspect of the information that would be included in the standard, she said.
“So for fleets right now that have to go back to a manufacturer and ask for a VMRS code, it would actually be done by the manufacturer ahead of time, so it would be automatic that a manufacturer creates a VMRS code, she said. “It’s just standard operating procedure in the industry for a manufacturer to create a VMRS code.”
