Huffman Trucking Fleet Maintenance Database Solution

Company

Huffman Trucking is a privately owned transportation company that has been in business for 60 years. The company has grown into a multi million-dollar company with over 1,400 employees and hundreds of vehicles. Huffman Trucking needs a better way to track the maintenance on their fleet of tractors, trailer and the roll-on/roll-offs. The fleet has to undergo periodic maintenance.

Plan

Putting the equipment’s maintenance history, the parts used and vendor information into one database will save Huffman Trucking time and money. The database can include parts inventory information, parts catalogue information, the vendors used and their associated information, and parts purchasing history. The database will include all the maintenance history on each piece of equipment, such as the maintenance of the equipment itself, tire maintenance, the type of maintenance and the maintenance work orders.

Conclusion

Building a database saves money on maintenance by reducing redundant information and improving record keeping. Both the service and accounting departments will be able to utilize this database to keep track of parts purchases and costs. Having all the information in one central database would allow the diverse facilities to use the database. This type of centralization would bring more accuracy in Huffman Trucking’s record keeping and would save money, time and manpower.

Huffman Trucking Fleet Maintenance Database Solution

Introduction

Huffman Trucking is a privately held national transportation company with just under 1,400 employees and facilities across the United States. Huffman Trucking has benefited from a relationship with US Government that started in the late 1930’s. During the Second World War, shipping of materiel between manufacturers and port cities increased business to the point that Huffman was eventually able to purchase and absorb several other trucking companies (http://aapd.phoenix.edu/CIST/VIP).

Huffman Trucking has recently hired a consultant company, Smith Systems Consulting, to design a database that will enable Huffman Trucking to better organize and track the truck maintenance for their fleet. Smith Systems Consulting has done an analysis of Huffman Trucking to develop a basic plan for integrating information into a database. Entities and attributes have been defined by Smith Systems, but the relationships and tables of the database still need to be defined.

Smith Systems Consulting has identified eleven entities which will be included in the database. These are: Tire Maintenance, Maintenance Descriptions, Vehicle Types, Vehicles, Maintenance Work Order, Parts Inventory Add To Stores, Parts Inventory Issues, Parts Catalogue, Vendors, Parts Purchasing History and Vehicle Maintenance. We will describe the entities, their attributes and the relationships among