One of the biggest expenses in
any manufacturing business is the failure of equipment to perform tasks on a
consistent basis. Simply put “Downtime”

The equipment was originally purchased to do a specific job
at a specific speed, it made sense to put it in the production line.

So originally the machine ran well 100% of the time, the supplier or manufacturer
would check it on a regular basis, for as long as the warranty was in effect.
Soon the checks stopped happening and the manufacturer did not visit any more.
A few months passed and the maintenance man said “we have to change the slider shaft, it is worn out” This resulted in $500.00 for a new shaft, 2 men for 12 hours to install it, Oh yes, don’t forget the 12hours
of downtime! Labor 2X12X25$/HR = 600.00 plus Downtime of 8300.00 Suddenly we have spent 8900.00 and we do not know when this machine will fail again! I used $8900.00 as a subtotal, because that is only the “tip
of the iceberg” We must consider another scenario, You now have to work
overtime to catch up, If you can! Oh and yes, how about the cancellation of the
order for those parts you were making, because you could not deliver on time?
What did that cost?
Of course this situation is only hypothetical, but you can
see very easily where an improvement can be made, the answer is of course
“Preventive Maintenance”

Step one… Operator maintenance, initially something as easy
as checking the oil level before use, may have saved the above problem.

With operator maintenance we train the operator to do as much day to day, running
maintenance as possible, he is the first line of defense and should be able to
tell us if the machine is vibrating, making an unusual sound, leaking oil, etc.
Operator maintenance is one of the best things any company can institute.

The next step in the Preventative Maintenance Program is setting
up a series of PM inspections, this is a formal way of performing equipment
inspections, with a view to preventing breakdowns, these PM’s are different for
each machine and must be monitored for effectiveness and to see whether or not
they are done on a timely basis

Deficiencies that are found during a PM would be recorded in
a CMMS and corrected at an opportune time that can be planned for unlike the
breakdown scenario

For further information contact: CMMS@maintservice.com