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Australia wins diagnostic test

In a major victory for Australian service standards, a pair of Hino Australia service technicians won the diagnostic category of

In a major victory for Australian service standards, a pair of Hino Australia service technicians won the diagnostic category of the Hino Japan Service Technical Contest, after winning the local competition.

Steven Browitt of Gold Coast Hino and Brendan O’Grady of Prestige Hino in Victoria finished first and second in Hino Australia’s inaugural National Skills Contest, defeating eight other technicians from around the country.

Competitors faced a number of challenges, including physical fault finding and repair, as well as diagnosis of electrical malfunctions in a range of vehicles, all under the watchful eye of Hino’s regional service managers.

Greg Bleasel, Hino Divisional Manager, Product Support, says the tests re-created every-day situations and were designed to identify the key strengths and limitations of all participants in an effort to provide the means to identify and develop future training needs.

“For our pre-delivery inspection, for example, technicians were examined as to how well they adhered to the process, and their accuracy in ensuring 100 per cent quality control,” Bleasel says.

“In another test, we rigged a 300 Series truck with a physical fuel line blockage, which caused the truck to starve for fuel shortly after starting. To further complicate the fault, we added an electrical malfunction – a damaged fuel line control valve – that prevented fuel from passing into the common rail.”

Browitt and O’Grady then pitted their skills and experience against their Hino counterparts from Malaysia and 10 domestic Japanese dealerships in the 2008 Hino Service Technical Contest in Japan.

Bleasel thinks the Diagnostic category is the most important of the four categories comprising Japan’s Service Technical Contest.

“We placed a lot of emphasis on diagnostics and root cause analysis, because we consider the ability to identify a fault is paramount if we are to minimise vehicle downtime.

“Hino Japan was also extremely impressed at our guys’ diagnostic skill levels.”

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