Fleet maintenance can be a tricky business with plenty of details, especially when it comes to managing warranties. A fleet, large or small, always has several active warranties that cover a multitude of assets, parts, and components. But far too often, this benefit from OEMs and aftermarket companies is not effectively leveraged. In many cases, maintenance tasks that include covered parts and labor are completed by the fleet operator, and the cost is never recovered.

Understanding and managing your warranty landscape is more than just a task to check off your list. Having the tools to classify your asset and part warranties, then automatically detect potential claims while capturing all relevant data can result in significant cost recovery and provide a boost to your bottom line.

This blog will guide you through the basics of warranty management in fleet operation, helping you to control costs and increase efficiency.

Understanding Different Types of Warranties

Standard Warranty: This is the manufacturer's assurance to cover any faults in workmanship, material, or product construction within a defined limit of time or usage. It often includes powertrain, major component, corrosion, and emissions control system coverage.

• Extended Warranty: A contract, either mutual or purchased, that extends the standard warranty in terms of duration or mileage, or both. It may include extended service plans, optimized contracts for special service vehicles, corrosion service contracts, environmental protection plans, and fleet service plans.
• Policy Warranty: This serves as a contract to rectify chronic failures and latent defects, going beyond the standard or extended warranty. It can consist of owner notification programs, goodwill adjustments, and service recall programs.
• Specific Service Warranties: Often unseen by the public, these warranties are tailored to unique trade situations, negotiated individually and often highly beneficial in cases like full-service lease fleets.
• Aftermarket Parts Warranties: Rather than covering the complete asset or a portion of it, these warranties cover individual parts. These parts may be sourced from the asset manufacturer or a parts supplier.

Warranties can originate from different sources, including original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), component manufacturers, parts replacement suppliers, and rebuilders. Each offers unique value and safeguards against potential pitfalls in your fleet operations.

Tackling Challenges in Warranty Management

Warranty management can be fraught with challenges, including difficult warranty settlements that lead to vehicles being out of service, inflating costs due to damaged or non-returnable parts, and time-consuming claim filings.

Accurately capturing data related to warranty claims, accident investigations, and legal records can help overcome these challenges. Implementing a management information system like the Vehicle Maintenance Reporting Standards (VMRS) can provide a standardized format for identifying costs and facilitating cash recovery.

Balancing Manufacturer Guidelines and Warranty

Preventive maintenance, while necessary to limit component failures, needs to be balanced with warranty requirements. For young fleets, this balance may lean more towards labor-intensive diagnostics and warranty-focused maintenance. In contrast, older fleets may need more repair, rebuild, upgrade, and replacement actions.

It's essential to follow the manufacturer's guidelines while under warranty but remember: some manufacturers may push for more preventive maintenance than needed to minimize warranty claims. After the warranty has expired, you can adjust the maintenance tasks based on your fleet's experience and the equipment's failure history.
Achieving this balance isn't magic. It requires good record-keeping and a capable Fleet Maintenance solution.

Powering Your Fleet with AMCS Fleet Maintenance

AMCS Fleet Maintenance is a powerful solution that simplifies warranty management. It captures and reports your vehicle maintenance activities using VMRS codes, providing a robust basis for warranty claims.

You need only define a warranty once; tell the system what areas it covers (via VMRS) and how long in time or usage meter (distance, hours run, etc.) it is in force. Then, simply associate the appropriate warranties with your assets.

The system will automatically determine if a Task on a Work Order is covered by a manufacturer’s warranty based on the VMRS coding of the Work Order. If so, it will alert the technician and automatically create a potential claim. This takes the guesswork out the claim eligibility and eliminates the costly manual creation of the claim. It also ensures that all of the information needed for the vendor to evaluate and process the claim is included.

Replacement part warranties are defined by the terms of your vendor/aftermarket manufacturer agreement. In a similar fashion, if a part is being replaced on an asset and the current part is covered, the same notification and claim process happens.

The system uses barcodes for parts, vehicles, and equipment to streamline data entry and prevent errors. You can employ the manufacturers barcode, UPC, or any available barcode. You can also print your own labels if desired.

To make things even easier, you can capture and then subsequently scan barcodes using a mobile device, making technology adoption hassle-free for fleets. There's no need for custom solutions or major system overhauls.

In simple terms, AMCS Fleet Maintenance handles the complexities of warranty management, freeing you to focus on the road ahead, and ensuring that you get the cost recovery owed to you when a covered system or part fails.