At MaintenX, our primary goal is to reduce downtime for our clients. Preventative maintenance services ensure that our clients can deliver maximum performance month to month. When equipment failures occur, we offer quick, efficient reactive maintenance services in order to reduce downtime. However, there is much that is out of our hands when it comes to proper equipment maintenance.
In order to prevent equipment failures, you as the facility must take responsibility for proper training and scheduling of preventive maintenance services. These are the top five reasons that equipment failures occur that you can easily prevent:
#1: Lack of training
Employees who do not know how to properly handle equipment are more likely to make mistakes that lead to failures. This is not the fault of the staff, but rather the fault of management to invest in the success of their people. Employee training may come with a major upfront cost, but the costs of mistakes due to inadequate training are far greater.
#2: Cost-cutting preventive maintenance
Preventative maintenance is the best way to avoid equipment failures, in addition to investing in employee training. Equipment that is not well maintained will run inefficiently, and eventually, burn out. If you are not cognizant of when your equipment reaches its breaking point, you will face major disruptions in productivity. Invest in preventative maintenance not only to increase equipment service life, but to acknowledge problems before they become catastrophic.
#3: Improper preventive maintenance
Skilled and informed preventative will save your facility from major disruptions in productivity. However, preventative maintenance that is rigid (rather than dynamic), uninformed (rather than performed by expert technicians), and scheduled by time (rather than an understanding of changing equipment needs) will lead to unnecessary and disruptive service. The more you service certain pieces of equipment, the more they are exposed to hazardous environments. Preventative maintenance should be smart, not simply scheduled.
#4: Lack of supervision
Facility machinery is not inherently intelligent. It performs well because the people that handle it are thinking and monitoring performance. Equipment processes that are not monitored or swept under the rug are at the mercy of circumstances, and likely to experience issues. In order to maintain your facility equipment, you must be vigilant and look for changes in performance to predict issues before they happen.
#5: Lack of leadership
It is not inherently an employee’s job to protect facility assets. Many employees who operate machinery will not report maintenance issues, either because they are improperly trained or will assume that it is out of their scope of responsibility. By making the team responsible for production objectives — from those in management to those on the floor — you can improve maintenance reporting and reduce equipment failures.
Talk to your local MaintenX team today to learn about preventative maintenance services and facility management best practices. Our technicians can help you develop a smart, agile preventative maintenance plan that will help you succeed.
