Our plant have a company car fleet which as any other comapny asset requires maintenance. The fleet includes basically street cars, vans, maintenance pickup trucks. They are assigned to specific departments/resources through the plant. Any suggestions/experiences on:
* Which maintenance tasks that shall be assigned to the user vs which should be handled by the Maintenance Department?
* How to plan/schedule maintenance jobs (it seems easier to get one production equipment down to perform a PM or corrective, than obtain the car keys from a manager).

Hi Eugene,
I used to work for an OEM car manufacturer in their service development and support department, so here are my thoughts.

The owner's handbook would (should) list the "daily" or "weekly" tasks such as checking the engine oil level, coolant, transmission fluid, tire pressure, lights etc. I think it is reasonable for the vehicle user to be responsible for these tasks. If the vehicle is a shared resource, this makes it more difficult to find someone to take this responsibility and I really do not have any good ideas.

Most light vehicle service intervals are a function of travel distance, or time ("or whichever comes first"). As the OEM, and sometimes having to make a call on warranty, we were always looking for a consistent maintenance history, demonstrating some care and diligence in performing basic servicing, eliminating "failure to maintain" as a potential root cause of failure.

With that in mind, I would be inclined to determine a calendar schedule for the vehicles in your fleet, ie if the big boss does 40,000km/year and the car is on 10,000km service intervals, the car needs to be serviced, on average, every 3 months. I think this makes it easier to plan the service, schedule an appropriate time for the service, and communicate the requirement well in advance to the person responsible for the vehicle.

Not sure how feasible this is for you, but perhaps some ideas you might be able to consider.

Who is the custodian of the cars? Do you outsourced major works like overhauls, painting, tyre change etc?

Yes, most (if not all) of cars jobs are outsourced, we have industrial mechanics not auto mechanics.