The petroleum haulage operations of the Hoyer Group have developed a unique relationship with MAN; an awards programme that monitors and rewards the truck manufacturer's network members who service and maintain Hoyer's MAN fleet.
The man running the scheme is Hoyer Senior Fleet Engineer, Peter Ellison. He told us, "Our business is judged on its performance in four key areas - safety performance, legal conformity, customer service and operating costs. It made sense to us to mirror these aspects onto the MAN dealers who look after our trucks and tanker trailers, so we developed a system that gives us extremely detailed tracking of a number of extended Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)."
The Hoyer KPIs, seven in total, cover fleet safety incidents, fleet availability, MOT first time pass rates (PRS counts as a fail), O licence prohibition notices, quality checks, general service levels and loads undelivered ('dropped loads') due to mechanical problems. "Of these," said Peter, "safety, prohibitions and dropped loads are perhaps the most keenly monitored, though the other four are all viewed as highly important to our overall fleet performance."
The scheme has just completed its second year and the results to date are impressive. In every area, Hoyer's target of continuous improvement is being met, with this year's winning dealer hitting 96.5% in first time MOT passes (tractors and trailers), 95.6% fleet availability, 0.28% dropped loads (for every one thousand loads planned, less than three aren't delivered due to mechanical reasons), 50% independent checking of individual jobs quality and zero safety related incidents. "Considering this dealer, DSV Commercials in Immingham, handles almost 90 pieces of our specialist equipment, this is a tremendous achievement," said Peter Ellison.
Prior to the scheme starting, Peter Ellison and the Hoyer team had sat down with MAN and agreed the general outline of the idea. "Though we drove the agenda," he recalls, "it was very much a collaborative approach and together we set up the structure of the scheme, its KPIs, the processes required and the monitoring methodology. They bought into it from the start, as did the principals of the various dealerships once we introduced them to the scheme."
Since those early days, the Awards programme and its KPIs have been driven through highly focussed weekly assessment meetings between every involved dealership and the relevant Hoyer Local Transport Manager. Every KPI is reviewed and agreement reached on opportunities for any improvements. It's a rigorous process, but one that is now highly valued by every MAN dealership handling Hoyer fleet work - each one is highly focussed on winning in the coming years.
The Awards themselves covered four main areas this year, though Peter Ellison is planning a number of additions and changes for the 2011/2012 Awards. "This year we made presentations of trophies with added rewards for the top performing Dealer of the Year, for Outstanding Individual Performance and for the Technician of the Year. On top of this, we rewarded every dealer on the basis of performance in minimising our 'dropped load' numbers - with the understanding that these rewards would be shared with the service and parts teams that helped them achieve their award-winning standards.
We will probably extend the Awards in 2012, possibly including Hoyer personnel - and we will certainly be driving the targets up once again, to keep us all on our toes."
It has been an intensive collaboration between operator, manufacturer and network, delivering what Allan Davison, Divisional Director at Hoyer, describes as 'essential continuous improvements in helping Hoyer meet its own customer contract targets'. With such things as dropped loads reducing in just two years by more than 65%, MOT first time pass standards now set at 97% over the whole fleet for 2012, and independent quality checks up to 17.5% against a previous target of 10%, it would be hard to argue against the validity and performance of the Hoyer/MAN programme.