The Virginia Port Authority’s Hampton Roads Chassis Pool (HRCP II), which operates the Port of Virginia’s intermodal chassis and empty container yards, recently selected Blume Assets to increase visibility and maximize efficiency in its fleet of more than 17,500 chassis, Blume Global said.
With the Blume Global maintenance and repair (M&R) application, HRCP II has full visibility into the status of its chassis, ensuring they are maintained efficiently so utilization of the fleet is maximized, and the downtime in the M&R cycle is minimized.
“In the M&R cycle there are two types of costs: overhead and the cost of the repairs themselves. Often we see that the amount spent on overhead is equal to the cost of the repairs,” said Shawn Tibbetts, president and chief operations officer of Virginia International Terminals, a subsidiary of the Virginia Port Authority that owns HRCP II.
“Blume Global’s system addresses both and helps us streamline the administration process. Blume Global has been a long-time partner and has helped us track-and-bill chassis for a number of years. It was only logical for us to adopt its market-leading M&R application to derive additional efficiencies from our chassis M&R.”
The Blume Global M&R application, a capability of Blume Assets, reduces the time that damaged equipment remains out of service by providing greater visibility of the M&R process to all stakeholders, Blume said. Leveraging the application automates and streamlines asset owners’ communications with their repair network and enables cost transparency and service time efficiency.
Blume Global helps the inspector, mechanic and manager better collaborate by providing insight into the repairs that need to be made to get the equipment back into service as quickly as possible, the company asserted. The system highlights suspect or repetitive repairs, enabling HRCP II to take advantage of cost savings opportunities.
The M&R application connects asset owners with more than 900 repair depots and facilities on a single robust platform and enables those that are not asset owners to benefit from the network data accumulated over 25 years. It is this network that powers the end-to-end visibility of the supply chain that is unique to the industry.
Blume Global said its solutions enable carriers, service providers and enterprises to manage key assets, including containers, chassis, trailers and more, across the entire supply chain. It’s designed to provide accurate and dynamic asset tracking, financial management, demand forecasting and maintenance and repair.
“Preventable costs accumulate quickly and that is something that our customers recognize,” said Pervinder Johar, CEO of Blume Global. “The effort it takes to calculate and validate an estimate, and subsequently pay it, is an indivisible burden our customers often face.
“Blume Global solutions help our customers reduce heavy administration overhead costs and, in most cases, reduce the actual cost of the repair itself, saving them both time and money.”
