Five Tips for Setting Up a Service Center

Apex's Wayde Snow offers these suggestions for providers interested in creating their own service center:

1. To get any repair department off the ground, find a self-starter with a solid maintenance repair background dealing with fleets. If that person has supervised a shop or two, that's all the better.
2. Set aside adequate space for your repair center. A one-man shop should be large enough to work on two machines simultaneously, Snow advises; use your shop for repairs rather than storage.
3. Don't go overboard in buying tools. Concentrators, for example, don't require much more than basic hand tools, so buy only tools that you need for the items that you repair.
4. Try to head off problems by identifying each piece of equipment's unique quirks and addressing them with appropriate maintenance and equipment checks. This type of proactive, preventive maintenance is practiced in other industries with fleets and it's proven to result in savings and reduced breakdowns, Snow says. This will benefit you not only in patient satisfaction but also in reducing after-hours calls for malfunctions.
5. Create strong relationships not only with manufacturers but also with some of the excellent after-market vendors from which you can purchase parts, and a company or companies that specialize in major-component refurbishing.

"These vendors are invaluable to your repair shop succeeding," Snow says, adding that he works mainly with major-component refurbishers that deal in compressors and sieve beds. "Along with their excellent customer service and being fun to work with, they have valuable information that they are very forthcoming with."