Bundaberg Regional Council’s Fleet Services team has introduced a new Lockout/Tag-out system to track the status of the service and repairs of the council’s vehicles and plant fleet and ensure compliance with all legal, statutory and regulatory requirements.
Central to the system is the ‘key tracker’ board, which works on a key for a key basis. Each mechanic is assigned their own
coloured peg, which they use to unlock the keys for a specific vehicle or piece of equipment.
Their coloured peg is left locked in the tracker until the vehicle keys are returned to the board and the work ticket is signed off. Anyone looking at the board can then tell which mechanic is working on a machine at any one time, just by the colour of the peg left in the tracker.
“We have approximately 1700 plant items and we process about 8000 work tickets each year,” said Bundaberg Regional Council Manager Fleet Services Andrew Railz, who found the key tracker system supplier online. “It’s hard to keep track of the keys.”
Each board incorporates plastic slots where the accompanying job paperwork is filed during the duration of the job.
A traffic light system is used on the board to indicate the progress of the job so the team knows when an asset can be released from the workshop.
The workshop’s leading hand oversees the board throughout the working day.
There are many electronic key tracker systems on the market, but Bundaberg Regional Council chose Autotag Australia’s Key Tracker system because it was simple and required no electricity, licenses or maintenance.
The council has adopted boards for the following fleet operations: heavy fleet, light fleet, minor plant, auto electrical, fleet assets to be commissioned and de-commissioned fleet assets.
“That board gives me all the information I need to know about the job,” said Railz, who attributes the success of the project to the fleet team.
“The entire Fleet Services team has been involved in the whole process from the creation and development of the system to the ongoing ‘fine-tuning’ which is reviewed at weekly tool-box meetings.”