The crunch ears ahead
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• NOW that we have entered the last decade of the 20th Century. Workshop with a new look, it is appropriate that we attempt to look ahead through the Nineties to the year 2000.
Workshop magazine and workshops in general together with opertors, equipment manufacturers and the whole repair and maintenance industry face new challenges which are coming through strongly. It's only 35 months to 1993 and the single European market, while standards of service and takeovers have already been strongly in evidence as issues in the late Eighties.
In order to find how others view the immediate next 10 years, we contacted around a dozen organisations for their views. Here are the replies.
Motor Agents Associations
MM Truck Committee chairman Stan Bachelor says:
/ Minimum standards and quality control will be the hallmark for the franchised truck dealer in the 1990s. It is expected that manufacturers and dealers will be working together to obtain BSI 5750 registration. This will then see the demise of the below standard workshop and the poor administration systems.
More and more transport workshops will close and the maintenance and repairs put in the hands of dealers, which should prove cost effective for the operator.
Leasing and contract hire are not only here to stay, but the next decade will see a considerable growth in this form of operation, linked to full contract maintenance. It is alter all the logical way to budget future operating costs and to guarantee maxium utilisation and minimum downtime.
With the new generation of trucks, servicing and maintenance is likely to be more cornplexed and will require considerable investment in specialised tooling.
There is a shortage of skilled technicians and greater resources will be required for training as job descriptions must be attractive if we are to encourage recruitment.
Freight Transport Association / Commercial vehicles in the next decade will inevitably become more sophisticated. Legislation on exhaust emissions, braking, etc, will force manufacturers further down the avenue of electronic control of engines, braking and transmissions.
We can expect to see more fuel injection and metering and a greater move to mechanical gearboxes with a pre-select facility. By the end of the decade the emphasis will be more on fluid suspension rather than air, again with electronic control, and increasingly brakes will be antilock.
As a direct result of technological advances on vehicles, ,workshops must have complementary technology. If a commercial vehicle has an on-board computerised monitoring system, the workshop needs a computer which will take the down-loaded data.
A possible result of all these advances is that only the bigger operators, manufacturers and dealers will be able to afford the type of high-tech workshop equipment that will become increasingly necessary. The result could he highly specialised repairers relying on manufacturers and dealers for the specialist skills.
Commercial Trailers Association / Only a brave man would attempt to accurately forecast what will happen to the UK trailer industry in the next decade. If total EEC harmonisation is achieved we shall see uniform weights and dimensions in all member states. The advent of cabotage and total freedom of movement of goods may produce dramatic changes in distribution patterns.
If a shift occurs, for example, to, say, swop-bodied drawbar units, then trailer design and production will have to keep pace. Demand will rise for certain types such as reefers, insulated and curtainsiders suitable, of course, for Chunnel operation.
EEC trailer type approval when in place should operate to the benefit of UK manufacturers with opportunities opening up when barriers currently created by national schemes should have disappeared. A properly constructed trailer registration scheme may well follow with attendant benefits in some areas.
Manufacturers must prepare to respond to demands for the wider application of road-friendly suspensions and other changes to protect both the environment and the infrastructure.
UK trailer production has peaked and the uncertainty over future interest rates and other fiscal restraints plus the slow build up to total harmonisation may well produce two or three lean years. Meanwhile, in preparation for stiff competition, CIA members will be producing higher quality trailers backed by a code of practice and improved after-sales service resulting from discussions with the operators and tougher membership qualifications, supply sector. The organisation expects that all standards will improve over the next 10 years — not just those of FSG — as service levels, technical expertise and product quality move to ever higher levels.
The FSG name already underwrites its ethical technical distribution network. The fidelity fund is a unique endorsement of its members' financial viability, its high enrolment criteria ensures the calibre of new members, and its monitoring system maintains continuity of service levels. Major national fleet customers now approve PSG factors for supply. and we see this type of business as an area of future growth, building upon the Group's excellent foundation of local fleet supply which will always be the cornerstone of its business.
Road Transport Industry TrainingBoard
/ The imminent arrival of the b single European market with its potential customer base of 320 million consumers must provide untold opportunities for road transport, already carrying 85% of freight and this figure is increasing.
However, these opportunities are valueless without skilled personnel. particularly those needed to keep all the vehicles properly maintained.
The RTITB has for more than be a private company. It will continue to provide all the main current functions of the RTITB.
The exact timetable for the transition has yet to be finalised, but it is anticipated that the new company will have taken over fully from the existing Board by 1 April, 1992. This means that it will be in place to help the industry meet the challenges of the 1990s, and the single European market in particular.
Institute of the Motor Industry 11111 director-general Roy Ward says:
/ In the coming decade we shall be recruiting in an extremely difficult market place, making it all the more important to retain the staff we currently have, and those we recruit.
This industry provides one of the most exciting and dynamic careers a person can seek, but we have failed as an industry to put that message across. There has been much activity of late at national level to clarify our career structure.
But the White Paper Employment for the Nineties has created
a fresh challenge for those involved in training delivery and standard setting, and as an industry we must make sure that we establish an organisation that can effectively meet this challenge without added bureaucracy and at minimal cost.