Boosting Labor Productivity in Bus Maintenance Operations
Client Context
A large urban transit agency faced declining bus availability driven by poor frontline supervision and low technician productivity. To address these challenges, leadership engaged a third party to assess maintenance performance across three major facilities.
Key Challenges
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Declining reliability and rising operational costs across maintenance operations.
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Poor labor effectiveness and low technician “wrench-time” (value-added work).
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Frontline supervisors not actively managing labor quality or productivity.
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Inadequate information systems, offering limited visibility into asset health and workforce performance.
Approach & Key Success Factors
EFESO conducted a multi-phase assessment to uncover the root causes of inefficiencies and recommend actionable improvements:
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Preliminary Data & Performance Analysis: Evaluated maintenance KPIs to identify variances and underperformance areas.
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On-site Observations & Interviews: Engaged in direct process observations and interviews with maintenance personnel and leaders to validate insights.
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Benchmarking & Gap Analysis: Compared current-state operations against internal benchmarks and industry best practices to highlight performance gaps.
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Improvement Roadmap: Delivered a structured execution plan detailing short-, medium-, and long-term projects, resource requirements, and expected ROI.
Results
40-45%
“Wrench-time” value added work
$4.3M
Labor productivity savings opportunity