If you are running a business that uses equipment and machinery to run, you know how expensive it can be to replace it. Most heavy equipment is costly, and they can be operational when they have a defect. This can lead to delays and a lot of money.
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| Equipment Maintenance Checklist: Use These Maintenance Tips to Extend Your Equipment Life: eAskme |
You can consider various methods to improve the return on investment and extend equipment life.
You need to plan when and have regular maintenance schedules to ensure they are working well.
Constant maintenance helps prevent expensive downtimes, and you can predict when failure is likely to occur.
This article will explore maintenance tips and checklists to extend your equipment life.
Create a Preventive Maintenance Program:
One way to ensure your equipment is in good condition is to incorporate preventive maintenance, which helps you anticipate any changes that might affect it.
When you note a difference, you can incorporate corrective actions to ensure performance and reliability.
For preventive maintenance to be effective, you need regular modification and systemic inspections, as well as performance analysis and testing.
If your business relies on heavy equipment such as a generator for power, you need to inspect how its works constantly.
Incorporating commercial generator maintenance can help extend its life and minimize unscheduled failures.
If you aren't sure what to look for, consider asking the manufacturer or hiring an expert to keep track of your machinery.
A proper maintenance program can decrease expensive parts replacement and improve the resale value.
Additionally, you will get better parts inventory management and improve the equipment performance.
It's important to note that preventive maintenance is beyond regular maintenance, like changing filters and lubricating.
Effective preventative maintenance (PM) is inclusive from when the equipment was purchased to the end of its useful life.
Some of the customer agreement values included in preventive maintenance are diagnostic technology, Repair agreements, and machinery inspection programs.
Analyze and understand Your Machines Inside and Out:
To implement an effective maintenance program well, you must analyze and understand your machines inside and out.
You will need to create an asset management life cycle to gain vital information about the equipment from the time of purchase to the end of its life., You can check the equipment manual, which is often well-researched h and contains all the essential information you need.
The manuals often prescribe the recommended service intervals for each component in the machine and the servicing products that you need to use.
Further, the manufacturer will often highlight the acceptable operating condition for the equipment to ensure any service is done correctly.
Understanding your machines will give you a clue about the problem and the process to correct it.
Additionally, you must listen and question your operators to know more about the machine. If you are not in the machine controls daily, you must take the information seriously and defects that operators notice.
As the operators do their tasks, they can quickly know the machines' idiosyncrasies and quirks.
In case you suspect they are a problem, it's wise to stop any operation and take time to fix the issue before it goes out of hand or becomes too expensive.
This will help you save time and money.
Identify and Evaluate the Major Causes of Machinery Breakdown:
One of the crucial steps in implementing the preventive program is identifying the cause of the breakdown.
To correctly identify the issue, you must have studied and understood your machines in and out. There are often three types of equipment breakdown.
You can experience sudden failure where the machine breaks down without any warning.
In most sudden failure breakdowns, the issuer is easy to fix, and the equipment can continue with the operation.
Sometimes you can experience intermediate failures where the machine stoppage occurs randomly.
Such backups are hard to tell where the real issue is and are often frustrating.
Lastly, you can experience gradual failure, which is more preventable by routine inspections and maintenance.
During the process, you can detect wear and tear of parts and any part that nears the end of its lifespan.
The three failures can be due to thermally induced failures where the temperatures can lead to the breakdown of the equipment.
Another cause for the loss can be mechanically induced failure, which is easy to recognize and prevent.
However, erratic failure is one of the most difficult to detect and predict. It occurs at various times under different conditions.
Most of these failures are due to overloads on hydraulic or electrical systems.
It's essential to understand your machines to make it easy to detect defects and any failures before they get worse.
Adhere to the Manufacture's Recommended Maintenance Intervals:
All Cat equipment will always have a detailed manual from the manufacturer on handling and maintaining the machinery.
These manuals have been written from experiments, testing, and knowledge to ensure the equipment is cared for.
Follow the recommended intervals by the manufacturer and keep a record to keep track of your equipment.
Failure to follow the recommended maintenance protocol and intervals might lead to denial of the warrant rights.
The manufacturer's warranty covers all the equipment parts and is only valid if the machinery is operated as designed.
Train Your Employees on Effective Machinery Operation:
Most of these machines you will often give your employees to use when doing any task.
If they don't know how to use the machine or operate it satisfactorily, there is a high chance that your machines will not be well maintained.
Additionally, they don't know what to look for or detect the problem when the machine has a problem.
That's why it's essential to train your employees well and learn how to operate the equipment.
This way, they can detect changes quickly in how a machine works.
When creating a preventive maintenance program, always include operator training consisting of reviews of the operator manual and a demonstration of the system and controls.
When you have trained employees, production will increase, and minimal breakdown will be experienced.
Conclusion:
You need good maintenance schedules to prevent your machinery from breaking down.
Using the manual types recommended interval is essential to avoid losing the warranty.
Additionally, ensure your employees are well-trained to operate and can detect any problem that might arise.
Please don't wait until the machine completely breaks down; you have to spend a lot of time repairing it and money. Create a preventive management program and adhere to it.
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