Coast Mountain Bus Company

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Background
Coast Mountain Bus Company (CMBC) is a vital link in the Greater Vancouver multi-modal public transportation network.  CMBC was created on April 1, 1999 and was formerly known as BC Transit. CMBC is an operating subsidiary of TransLink, the Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority.
As part of the TransLink family, CMBC joins other subsidiaries, including SkyTrain, West Coas

	CMBC Warranty Savings (measured in thousands)

t Express, HandyDART, Albion Ferry and West Vancouver Blue Bus, offering customers a fully integrated transit system. CMBC strives to excel in providing service to its customers. The company has a history of service to the public that dates back to 1890 when the first electric streetcars were introduced to Vancouver. Electric trolley buses began replacing streetcars in 1948, and the innovative SeaBus ferry system was launched in 1977, followed by SkyTrain in 1986. 

Today, greater Vancouver has a population of two million residents and is served by 180 bus routes covering an 1,800-square kilometer area. Across the region, 400,000 passenger trips (boardings) are made daily along bus routes in 18 municipalities. CMBC’s current fleet of more than 1,100 buses includes 434 state-of-the art diesel buses and 232 zero-emission trolley buses.

The Challenges
Maintaining a large bus fleet raises considerable challenges.  For example, with more than 550 technicians servicing the fleet vehicles, tracking the maintenance on numerous buses is a daunting task. Each bus is not just one traceable asset, but rather a collection of multiple smaller assets such as engines and steering components. Currently, CMBC has 24,000 assets and over 56,000 parts records that are required to be maintained and accurately tracked.

Prior to 1996, CMBC realized that the systems in place to support maintenance management and materials management were not doing the job. They did not have a functional, comprehensive database for maintenance information.   Data was scattered across 12 different PC-based and
mainframe systems, making it difficult for mechanics who did not have a central reference system for equipment information.  Identifying repeat problems and previous work performed was too cumbersome.

To manage their fleet maintenance effectively, CMBC needed a single system, accessible from different locations, to store all their information. Specifically, they needed to manage revenue and non-revenue vehicles, including the purchasing and storing of related materials. At the time, materials were stored at six different sites, including an overhaul site where major repairs were done. 

An additional challenge with a fleet this large is to identify all of the warranty work. Unclaimed warranties for CMBC represented significant sums of money that could be added directly to the

	"We recognized and valued Datastream’s strong commitment to research and development as well as maintenance excellence." Wayne Bourdeaud'Huy Project Manager CMBC

company’s bottom line. And, in order to pinpoint recurring problems with mobile assets such as buses, technicians must have access to a consolidated repair history of the vehicle. However, when maintenance was performed at many different locations which may operate many different maintenance systems, this type of consolidation was virtually impossible without a system in place.

CMBC understood that it needed a multi-site asset management system that could consolidate all of its operations under the umbrella of a single "virtual enterprise." To find such a system, CMBC evaluated 35 companies in the maintenance software field, looking for one that could become the company’s single source of information for everything from gas mileage, to repair histories, to warranty claims.

Web-based Maintenance Solutions
It was clear from the beginning that a Web-architected solution would be most suitable to CMBC’s requirements. With a Web-architected solution, a multi-site deployment only requires one instance of server software for deployment across multiple locations, and it is far less complex to maintain and administer. Web-architected deployments also facilitate the sharing of information between locations and between systems. For example, because all product inventory can be viewed as a single, logical "enterprise inventory," new efficiencies can be realized by managing inventory on an enterprise scale rather than on a "siloed" site-by-site basis.

In the end, CMBC chose Datastream’s Web-architected asset performance management solution, Datastream 7i™, to maintain a complete database of their fleet information.   With Datastream 7i, CMBC can define multiple warranties for multiple pieces of equipment for all vehicles. When a work order is opened on a vehicle with a valid warranty, Datastream 7i immediately flags it as warranty. The result is that all labor and costs associated with the work are captured in order to make the proper claim. Using Datastream 7i has already resulted in $950,000 of recovered warranties – literally "found money" for the company. "Datastream 7i tracks real-time information on warranties, repair history and maintenance statistics giving CMBC consistent and reliable data and leading to improved decision-making processes," said Wayne Bourdeaud'Huy, project manager at CMBC.  "Datastream’s software helped improve our productivity, and we are making better decisions about our assets."

Powerful Asset Management
Prior to Datastream 7i, maintenance technicians were forced to use estimated usage data such as kilometers traveled and fuel consumed when trying to determine where an asset was in its life cycle. This often resulted in inaccurate assessments of asset history and maintenance requirements. With Datastream 7i, asset data can be captured at any CMBC facility so technicians can work off of real and accurate data. This results in better maintenance routines, fewer breakdowns, and more efficient operations. 

Centralized data provides a broad range of additional benefits as well. For example, if a vehicle gets into an accident, records on that vehicle need to be provided promptly. Before Datastream 7i, maintenance workers had to manually dig through PC-based and mainframe systems, often at multiple locations. This cumbersome process of pulling together information could take hours or even days. With Datastream 7i, information on any asset can be retrieved in a matter of minutes.

The Results
Within months of implementation, CMBC had a streamlined, single-source database, allowing it to get accurate, real-time information on its fleet. Datastream integrates with other computer systems in the plant—including a fuel tracking system—so data is current and easily accessed by technicians from a centralized location.  In addition, CMBC is using different Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to define and monitor asset performance, including unfinished purchase orders, backorders, requisition lines, and open work orders for each site.  The KPIs provide a snapshot of how CMBC assets are performing compared to their user-defined benchmarks.

Better decisions translate into equipment that runs longer and safer. With the information stored in an easy-to-use database, CMBC does not have to rely on incomplete maintenance information. Since the initial deployment of Datastream software in 1996, CMBC has gone through several upgrades, all of which have gone smoothly and provided significant benefits. Today, Datastream 7i serves as the backbone to the entire CMBC enterprise, enabling thousands of vehicles to be tracked and serviced as if they were all part of a single "virtual garage." This has resulted in greater vehicle availability, reduced operating costs and, most importantly, safer and more reliable transportation for the people of greater Vancouver.