Regular factory equipment maintenance, including high-end machines and tools, is essential to running your operations smoothly. Because you need to pay attention to preventative maintenance, your goods’ quality will be protected, and your clients will also stop doing business with you due to a lack of professionalism.
Suppose you have a tight deadline, but one of your production machines stops working due to a lack of power or poor efficiency. What would you tell your client? First, it will look highly unprofessional on your part because you couldn’t meet a deadline due to carelessness.
Locomotive jacks experts emphasize the critical role of preventative maintenance in ensuring heavy machinery’s smooth operation and longevity. There are various ways for you to ensure preventative maintenance to keep your machine running. For example, you can plan to accommodate your production team, take reliability consulting or ask your equipment provider to arrange regular maintenance.
To be precise, there are various ways to ensure your machines are well taken care of. In this post, you’re going to learn about the most important tips to keep your machines up-to-date.
5 Preventative Maintenance Tips to Keep Your Machine Running
Your manufacturing plant runs on two things, i.e., your employees and the machinery. Unlike humans, machines or equipment depend on you for their effective maintenance.
If you don’t ensure maximum prevention against power or system failures, there is a great chance your factory will suffer massively when machines break down.
So, here are a few tips for preventative maintenance that may help you keep your machines running for a long time.
1. Schedule Preventative Maintenance
Although some equipment may prompt maintenance requirements themselves, waiting until it happens and keeping the machine running can be a disaster in many cases.
So, instead of waiting for the machine to prompt when it is time for a quality check, you must schedule regular reliability consulting so the engineers can check the performance aspect of the machines. Reliability consultants perform extensive checks on heavy equipment to assess their performance and determine if any part of the equipment needs fixing.
Schedule preventative maintenance at least every 3-weeks so you can reduce the maintenance costs and keep your machinery from malfunctioning entirely.
2. Keep the Machinery Clean
While hiring reliability engineers is essential to keep the integrity of your machine from failing. But, it is also true that you can only hire reliability consultants for up to two weeks. These schedules must be timed accurately, or your industry will soon be out of funds.
So, in the meantime, the responsibility of taking care of the equipment falls on the operations’ employees. They can keep the machinery clean once the work is done for the day. However, if the machines aren’t kept clean nicely and are left with dirt and debris over time, it will cost more damage to circuitry and boards than you can imagine.
The supervisor must check the cleanliness of the machines before and after daily and take appropriate actions. This is an effortless step that will not only enhance the life span of your machinery but will also reduce the chances of downtime.
3. Stock Up Spare Parts
Another tip for planning preventative maintenance is stocking up on spare parts because there is no replacement for a spare part right when you need it, i.e., right in the middle of a breakdown.
You will find a list of available spare parts in the user manual when purchasing equipment and heavy-duty machinery. The manufacturer recommends having these spare at all times because they know these machine parts can malfunction at any point.
So, to ensure your factory doesn’t have to face downtime, you must always keep these spare parts at your disposal.
4. Train Your Employees
While reliability engineers and maintenance managers know precisely what needs to be done to maintain equipment’s performance and quality, the thing is, your staff isn’t aware of these things. But, unfortunately, they are the ones running the entire operation.
So, before you can hand over a piece of expensive machinery to your employees, you must train them in preventative maintenance. You can teach them how to operate the machine and keep it clean. These rules are elementary to learn. All of your employees will be able to grasp the idea of machinery maintenance.
But you won’t know that until you train them. Schedule regular training sessions whenever you bring in a new machine onboard. Get feedback from your employees and ensure they know how to use and maintain the equipment efficiently.
5. Lubricate the Machinery
While keeping your machinery high and dry to enhance its overall lifespan is essential, it is equally important to keep the equipment lubricated.
When we say lubricated, we don’t mean spilling oil over the entire machine. It simply means that you must oil the moving parts regularly, so the machine doesn’t stop working during an operation. This is essential for those machines that you regularly use in your factory.
Check the lubrication level of the moving parts, joints, and internal components. If machines are adequately lubricated, it can cause friction in the tools, making them break down. When that happens, it will take a lot of money to fix. Plus, your factory will have to suffer downtime.
So, it would be better to prevent that from happening ever. You can conveniently do that by lubricating the machines whenever needed.
Final Verdict
If you have recently invested in any machinery or run your factory, you must know that industrial machines are sensitive and need a lot of attention. So, if you want to ensure that your operations run smoothly and you’re able to make your money’s worth, never compromise on preventative maintenance via reliability consulting.
Reliability engineers are available for your ease and convenience. They perform regular checks on your equipment to ensure you don’t lose money only because a machine failed. It can be hazardous for a running industry, so they offer maximum assistance whenever needed.
Keep these tips in perspective to ensure your machines never suffer massive damage. If you perform these preventative checks, you will always be aware of equipment problems, allowing you to fix them in time.
