Recently some of the Transporting New Zealand team visited AMI’s MotorHub in Ngauranga, Wellington to tour the facility and learn about its recent upgrade to enable it to repair and refurbish heavy vehicles.
AMI has seven MotorHubs in the North Island and three in the south, where insurance claim assessments and below-excess repairs are carried out. Some sites also offer servicing and WoFs. The Ngauranga facility is the first to trial the concept of repairs for heavy vehicles.
The Ngauranga MotorHub has space to repair up to 30 drivable trucks per week at the same time, and a paint booth and drying booth that is big enough for a double-decker bus (along with multiple smaller paint booths for cars). Despite the size, the gas-powered drying booth can get up to temperature in just 4 minutes.
Our visit showed a hub of activity, with around 70 staff and a military precision to the turnover of vehicles, with all activity logged via an app in real time, and every worker issued with an iPhone. AMI MotorHub Relationship manager Ricky Kee-Sue told us that the amount of work means they don’t book repair jobs more than two weeks in advance, and can even 3D print minor plastic parts in-house to save time.
The scale and efficiency of the operation was perhaps best summed up by a big high-mounted electronic sign at one end of the large facility, which indicated how many toilets were occupied and on what level, not unlike commercial carpark signs showing vacancies. Ricky said this was to save staff time walking from one end to the other only to find themselves in a queue for the loo!
You can find out more here: https://www.ami.co.nz/motorhub
