I've got a Cat 430E and recently started doing rentals. I want to know what the best practice is for maintenance logs. Do you use excel spreadsheets or apps or a website? What works well for you to keep up with your fluids and parts?
Andre876, You have some options ranging from crude to expensive and flashy. Just one machine, I would consider a three-ring binder and use paper PM sheets. Make your own custom pm sheets based on the Cat ones or adapt the Cat Maintenance schedule matrix right out of the O&M. In another section, log repairs with a workorder. Use another section for oil sample reports. If you are handy with Excel, that works too. I found Excel works well if you have a good template to work with and a dashboard tab where hours and over-due services show up. I have a template that that worked well. A couple mistaken key strokes can mess things up, though. And back up copies are essential when the folder gets populated with much data. There are some nice web-based tools, but for one machine you will find the cost prohibitive.
Thanks Coaldust. Based on your suggestions, I'll put together a spreadsheet with the Preventative Maintenance being sheet1, repairs being sheet2 and sheet3 for oil sample reports. I'd be very thankful for a copy of the one you're using as well. I'll be wary of not putting wrong info in, I know how that goes lol. So yeah, definitely saving backups of that periodically should be helpful to go back to if I mess up at some point. I'll look into the Cat Maintenance schedule matrix as this sounds thorough. Since you touched on it, do you do your oil sampling through Cat's SOS program? If so, how have you found it? And what are some of the nice webtools I can make a note of for when I have more machines in the future? Big thanks, Andre
You are welcome. I’ll send you a copy of the spreadsheet when I get back to my computer. I prefer the Cat SoS program, reports and website. But, Chevron has a good system, too. Especially, if you are a lube customer and the Chevron Portland lab are great folks. I don’t like the Chevron website. It’s hard to navigate as more machines and reports are entered. For web based maintenance reporting, I like Fleetio. I’ve used it for two years. It’s more suitable for truck fleets vs equipment. You can contact Fleetio for a test drive. Also, look at older posts. We’ve discussed this subject a lot.