Good, well-qualified workshop technicians are becoming a rare breed. They can rightly demand higher wages as they can generate extra revenue for a workshop. They can be likened to a surgeon on a vehicle, and there is not a surgeon anywhere who would work on a dirty patient. If you are involved in an accident the first thing they do is clean you up. Metalwash says the same analogy should apply to your fleet.
Specialists in automated cleaning solutions for the mechanical, construction, automotive and machine service industries, Metalwash provides cleaning systems that claim to save businesses time and money, by allowing employees to focus on the job at hand and not worry about cleaning components.
Cleaning components is not a glamorous affair; no one really enjoys standing at a sink scrubbing parts with solvents and a brush, or wheeling heavy hubs, engines and gearboxes out to a jet spray. The operator gets covered and valuable time is wasted. The health and safety issues are high, PPE needs to be worn and solvents have a significant fire risk, as well as carcinogenic properties. Yet many workshops are still using processes that have been around for decades.
Senior managers want to retain good technicians, but still require them to prepare their work in an outdated and mundane way. Metalwash says operators are often unaware how much time is wasted and cleaning components is unlikely to top of their list of areas to evaluate in the business. Yet, every technician will spend at least 15 minutes of every day cleaning. This might not sound much, but when you have four or more technicians, it’s a lot of lost productivity over a month.
Spray wash machines
With this in mind, many large truck manufacturers and operators including MAN, Ryder, Tesco, Mercedes-Benz, Scania and Volvo have are now using spray wash machines, from companies such as Metalwash, to clean components. These machines use hot water and a high alkali detergent powder to clean multiple components at once – not only cleaning components to a very high standard but also flash drying them, to enable the parts to be immediately refitted to the vehicle. This is done in a closed environment with no operator involvement required, except loading and unloading the machine, either by hand or with a crane.
The machines are used for general degreasing of metal, plastic and rubber. General jobs include cleaning hubs and bearings for trailers, preparing warranty parts for return to the manufacturer and removing coatings on new parts effortlessly – all fully automated, freeing up the technician and allowing them to earn the business revenue.
The machines get components clean quickly and without the use of labour, enabling your ‘surgeons’ to operate on their components properly, to diagnose faults quickly and get vehicles back on the road as quickly as possible.
Component ‘dishwashers’ are available to rent with a full service, so all you have to do is put your dirty components in, push the start button and the components come out clean and dry. If anything goes wrong with the machine, then the rental company comes and fixes it at no additional charge. This is very similar to full contract hire on a truck for a few pounds per day.
Metalwash says any business would employ someone to clean all their dirty parts for a few pounds a day. These machines do this 24 hours a day, seven days a week with no holiday or sick pay. They provide all their own consumables and get rid of all their waste.
