Since 1985, Boasso America Corporation has been providing depot and transportation services to an ever-growing ISO Tank Container industry. Headquartered in New Orleans, Boasso operates 10 full-service terminals strategically located across the Eastern United States. Chris Hooge, Fleet Manager at Boasso, and Project Manager Amanda Hardesty work together with their team to implement and sustain continuous improvements for their eMaint CMMS solution.

Prior to implementing eMaint, Boasso had a minimally utilized software package to manage maintenance on 150 company-owned tractors, 69 pieces of yard equipment, and 1,700 chassis. Some locations used spreadsheets, while others used a whiteboard and paper-based methods. There was no uniformity in company maintenance processes, and the only PMs tracked were oil changes and annual inspections. As the company expanded from one location to ten, inventory grew and the company knew they needed a more sophisticated system to increase visibility and to better evaluate equipment.

Boasso selected eMaint as its CMMS provider because of its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery model, flexibility, ease-of-use, and customer service track record. eMaint performed a Kick Start led by one of eMaint’s Senior Consultants, who came on-site to help clean and load data, then familiarize the Boasso implementation team with the system. After the Kick Start, Amanda and Chris maintained momentum with project tracking, hands on training, and frequent adjustments based on feedback. Boasso’s process of taking time to identify team members to become advocates and to take ownership of the system significantly improved the success, implementation and adoption of eMaint CMMS.

Since implementing eMaint, regulatory compliance has improved noticeably at Boasso. The compliance department uses eMaint daily to track all service requirements and regulations for tractors and drivers, including licenses, insurance credentials, expiration dates, highway inspections, driver violations, and more. Boasso has customized the system so all terminal and compliance managers receive reports in order to cross-check other departments, helping to boost compliance as a whole, and establish more confidence in processes and equipment.

Customization is also key in the company’s use of Dashboards. The team utilizes a public eMaint dashboard filtered by user login using a workflow, enabling each user to only see the work that is assigned to him/her. Other workflows have been designed and implemented to track work requests and approvals in coordination with terminal managers. Using eMaint, Boasso is creating uniformity in daily processes and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) across all ten locations.

As a way to compare tire performance Boasso tracks tread depth on lift machines using condition monitoring in eMaint. This enables Boasso to calculate potential savings between new and retread tires based on brand and working environment. With eMaint, Boasso also gained insight into repair vs. replace decisions on important assets, such as using failure rate information to predict when a diesel particulate filter will clog, a situation in which the failure replacement cost is nearly 15 times the scheduled maintenance cost.

In addition to tracking and comparing costs associated with equipment, Boasso uses an automated process to export meter readings electronically from the tractors’ ECM to eMaint to help eliminate human error. PM tasks are auto-triggered based on meter readings and failure rates, utilizing predictive maintenance to minimize unplanned downtime. Robust reports are then generated for every piece of equipment maintained by Boasso.

Amanda H., Project Manager, Boasso America Corporation