What does your normal day look like?
I get up at about six in the morning and start the day with a cup of coffee and read my emails. This gives me a good overview of the day’s priorities. I arrive at the office at about 7:15 am.
My first job in the office is to see what came in from overnight transfers. I use these to create work orders and then divide them up on the mechanics’ planning board. Once the workshop is up and running, I check the repairs needed as requested in ProPlanner by our Shop staff. New work orders arrive throughout the day and maybe emergency repairs, which means the planning can change several times a day. You have to take into account that we receive about 130 to 140 vehicles a week to repair. That’s quite a lot of organising… and hard work. As soon as a vehicle is ready, it’s handed over to my colleague Sven. He then takes care of the transfer planning. Our garage is a well-oiled machine.
Besides preparing work orders, I also follow up on the scheduling of vehicle maintenance and inspection. We have 1,400 vehicles in the fleet, which means I have to schedule these about three times a week.
Another big part of my job is dealing with external suppliers. For instance, I compare prices for purchasing fleet parts, I deal with the garages that we work with for maintenance, external repairs, inspections, and so on. When a vehicle comes back from a repair or inspection, I or someone from my team also check this vehicle once more.
And during the day, I also receive lots of questions, emails, and phone calls that I have to follow up on. So, I’ve got a very varied and interesting job where scheduling is my most challenging main task.
I usually leave for home at about 5 pm. In my free time in the evenings, I sometimes play tennis with my wife, go swimming with my daughter, or go to the pub for a beer. And soon I can finally get back to aikido.
