The Importance of Equipment Maintenance in Manufacturing
In the manufacturing environment quite often the production manager is arguing with the maintenance manager. While the production manager needs to get “just” this last order done by Monday, the Maintenance Manager needs to get the equipment serviced for the safety of the equipment and the operators around it.
Sales are ramping up, demands are at the highest and the equipment needs to produce, produce, produce to keep up with the demand. Production managers see operators are working overtime, Maintenance on standby for any unscheduled downtime. Supervisors keeping an eye on the production. The forklift driving continuously moving skids off the production floor. Quality Control making sure everything passes inspections. All the gears are moving to get those orders out the door.
While on the last few batches you hear a loud noise followed by a grinding sound from the equipment. The whole line is down. Maintenance comes over and says, “We just skipped the last preventive maintenance, I don’t think skipping just a PM would cause this.”
Now we have 3 operators waiting for this equipment to get repaired, a supervisor running like a crazy person moving operators from here to there and informing management, Quality Control is now drinking coffee in the office, the Forklift drivers went for a sunny walk in the parking lot and the Orders are not getting filled. All the gears are now stopped just for one simple assumption. “This PM is not that important”.
Having accountability and a system to remembering what maintenance must be done on an equipment can be challenging. Even more challenging when you have 3 maintenance shifts and you just hired 2 maintenance technicians on different shifts. The communication can get a little hairy without a real time system. If your maintenance request are lengthy to fill out or have unnecessary fields to fill in and if they are handwritten with chicken scratches, often with Oil stains or I’ve even seen a half-burnt sheet (don’t ask); things will get lost in the shuffle and its hard to hand off a work order or PM between shifts if the last maintenance guy keeps the paper workorder in his possession.
Having a CMMS software helps ease this challenge of equipment maintenance and the production battle. It fixes most of these issues with real time communications and keeping everybody informed on what has happened and what will be happening with standard documents, Images, PDF, and Manuals can be added to the service sheets.
Everyone knows the guy who is the maintenance “guru”… he can fix “everything” in the shop. You know the equipment that is broken down at least 4 times a week? This is the guy who runs to the equipment, gets the man lift, goes on top of the hydraulic press, tinkers with this, moves a valve, wiggles a wire, prays a Hail Mary, presses start and…. voila it’s working. Magic!!
So, what does the rest of the team do. They go to this guy to fix everything because “He knows what he’s doing.” Come to find out, he checked the pilot pressure, made sure the linear was in the right position for the startup of the press, inspected the shear bolts, and inspect the oil level.
Simple tasks that if you did not know where to look it would seem “like magic.”
All of this “Tinkering” can now be replaced with a live monitoring and maintenance tracking from the software. Monitoring the pilot pressure with a pressure transducer; Reading the signal of the linear; Install a limit switch on the shear bolts; and add an oil level sensor. In addition, install an oil temperature probe and a few other sensors that help us identify possible issues on the equipment. You’ll be informed in real time with alerts and maintenance, or the operator will have the documentation to know how to correct it.
With live monitoring you can set a PM after 1000 cycles to check the guides. After 100000 cycles it needs to change the oil and every 7 days to have a visual inspection on oil leaks, Loosen Bolts etc.
You may be thinking, what happen with the Maintenance “Guru”? Well, he retired but not before sharing his knowledge on the CMMS software. Now his name and avatar come on many of his maintenance request he completed. Our new maintenance personal can look at the history of an issue and correlate the past issue with the new ones. This speed up the troubleshooting by 70%, training by 50% and cuts dependency of gurus by 100%. If you don’t know you just look at the history. And do you think the next generation is going to look something up on a piece of paper or on a device?
And let’s get back to the issue from earlier, what was the loud noise and grinding noise on the equipment that was mentioned first?
Well, a Bearing was dry, got hot and seized. The grinding noise was the bearing grinding against the shaft. And the loud noise….well….I don’t know.
Only thing I know is the order was really late on delivery because we did not have the bearing in stock.
In conclusion to keep all your gears moving but not grinding you are going to need more help than just the maintenance “Guru” sticky note reminders, hanging all the broken parts that needs to get order on the back wall of your maintenance office and having a phone tree for alerts.
CMMS software and the data it drives can help prioritize your production vs maintenance issues.
In review it will replace:
Maintenance’s “Personal Stash” for Inventory Management.
“Maintenance Back Wall (full of cool broken parts)” For Purchase Requests.
“Maintenance Guru” For Work Orders.
“The Battle of the Production floor” for Scheduled Maintenance.
“Frantic Floor Supervisors” for Equipment Alerts and procedures.
Ok, so you’re probably thinking we have a new CMMS software….now what?
Start small and work your way into it. Get familiar with the software. In alignment with your current process, start creating one PM or Work Order at a time or per equipment. Set up one live equipment at first. Identify the benefits of having the information in one place, share this information with your employees, enforce usage even if it feels awkward at first (it’s hard to break old habits) but stick to it! You will be one step ahead of your competitors and looking to a brighter future!
If you ever need any additional help regarding CMMS with Live equipment monitoring give EzKin Company a call and their Factory View Online “Gurus” can help your team with your custom needs!
For all the manufacturing and maintenance Gurus, keep doing what you’re doing! We hope this information helps you!
