An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Benjamin Franklin
We all want the equipment and systems we purchase to last
for a long time. It’s only fair
right? We spend months and sometimes
years planning, coordinating and executing the purchase of material handling
systems to make our business more efficient, increase our throughput while
making our labor resources maximized.
But there are economic and procedural forces out there working against
the long term health of your systems.
Economically, the pressure to deliver on profit and revenue
growth expectations is great.
Shareholders expect you to hit your revenue and profit targets. Operation Managers want to be successful and
keep costs down. However, the
repercussions of our ambition to deliver good results oftentimes is the
decision to eliminate or postpone investment in spare parts or planned
maintenance.
Spare parts are essential to keep your system running
consistently. We must identify the
essential parts required to keep our systems running. Specific parts should be on hand because they
are a high wear item and others should be on hand because the lead time to get
it replaced would be operationally prohibitive.
Nothing can be built to last
forever so it makes sense to develop the inventory of parts to replace when
necessary. Use your system provider for
help in determining what parts should be on hand.
Procedurally, most companies have established planned maintenance
checks and services for the various equipment in their facilities. However, sometimes these checks and services
are ignored or not completed properly.
Every piece of equipment in your facility should have its own set of
operator and maintenance manuals. Often
they are kept centrally in the maintenance office for reference, providing
maintenance tasks and frequency requirements.
The checks and services in these manuals should be incorporated into the
master maintenance plan and schedule.
The development and implementation of a proactive maintenance plan will
catch issues when they are small, keeping catastrophic equipment failures from
happening.
There are some cases where a company transitions from a very
manual, labor intensive process to a more automated approach to their
operation. Of course there are
operational cultural changes that present their own challenges. Training, developing standard operating
procedures, and keeping the equipment running can be tough when there is no
established maintenance team. In this
case, use your system provider to help you transition. They have the experience to help you select
the right spare parts, the proper operation and maintenance manuals and
examination and troubleshooting skills.
Contact for maintenance assistance until you develop a team of your
own.
As Ben Franklin says, “An ounce of prevention” (spare parts
and maintenance) “is worth a pound of cure”
For more information from Greg, view
his page at www.trifactor.com/greg
