How Safetykleen helped
- A&B Plant and Tool Hire gains a 500% of productivity from using Aquakleen machine.
- A&B Plant and Tool Hire saved 387 hours, equalling 10 weeks full-time work per year.
High-quality service and continuous improvement are important drivers for A&B Plant and Tool Hire. That is why they were looking for a new, more efficient way to clean their pool of 155 Husqvarna robotic lawn
mowers.
It’s the best thing ever for me. It saves us so much time cleaning the lawnmowers and in an environmentally friendlier way, as we’re not using chemicals. Now that we’ve seen the quality and speed of the cleaning, I am sure we’ll start using it for other tools as well.
Gareth Thomas - Managing Director, A&B Tool and Plant Hire
Challenge
A&B Plant and Tool Hire is a family-run business, founded in 1976 and supplying a wide range of Plant and Tool equipment. One key segment it serves is gardening equipment and that is where an important challenge arose for them.
A&B Plant and Tool Hire is an official dealer of Husqvarna and has a pool of 155 Husqvarna robotic lawnmowers out with customers across the South West of England and Wales. Its customers are using these lawn mowers multiple times a week and often have them outside in the charging pod whatever the British weather brings.
In order to maintain a warranty, the robotic lawnmowers require a yearly service at an official dealer. This service includes a thorough clean, checks on all moving parts and seals, and a software upgrade. After a full year’s operation, the lawnmowers are covered in baked-on mud, grass, and muck, which are hard to remove. A&B Plant and Tool Hire cleaned them using a bucket and a sponge and required a bottle of Elbow Grease for every lawnmower to get clean. Cleaning each of the robotic lawn mowers this way took A&B Plant and Tool Hire more than 3 hours per lawnmower. Cleaning all 155 therefore would take them more than 465 hours, the equivalent of 12 weeks full-time work for one person.
Solution
A&B Plant and Tool Hire considered this like too much time spent on cleaning, leaving them with two choices. Either lower the service and cleaning standard for its customers or finding a better cleaning solution. A&B Plant and Tool Hire pride themselves on their high service standards and therefore the only option was changing the cleaning process.
Having discussed the cleaning process, Husqvarna suggested A&B Plant and Tool Hire consider Safetykleen’s parts cleaning solutions. Through a consultative approach, working with A&B Plant and Tool Hire, and fully understanding the requirement, Safetykleen suggested a manual Aqueous parts cleaning application. Using non-corrosive, water-based chemistry, the baked-on mud, soil, and grass cleans off much faster than the traditional bucket and sponge solution used before. The manual brush and flowing, water-based chemistry soaks the contaminants off the lawnmower and leaves a cleaner finish, making it in turn also easier and faster to connect them to the computer after that for the service completion and software update.
Results, return on investment and future plans
The main objective for A&B Plant and Tool Hire was to find a more effective and efficient way to clean the 155 robotic lawn mowers for the required yearly service. Thanks to the implementation of the Safetykleen manual Aquakleen application, the cleaning time for each lawnmower has been reduced from 3 hours to only 30 minutes. Considering the A&B Plant and Tool Hire have 155 robotic lawnmowers that require servicing and cleaning, the total productivity gains achieved reach 387 hours, equalling 10 weeks full-time work.
Having created an effective process, using Safetykleen’s manual Aquakleen application, A&B Plant and Tool Hire also does not require any Elbow Grease sprays anymore, reducing their cost and waste for cleaning significantly.
