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Silence is not that precious in a manufacturing plant. The silence of machinery that follows abruptly creates panic. Not only are you wasting time, but you are also bleeding revenue, and you are also missing deadlines. A long-time operation has been based on a "run-to-fail" scheme or keeping things running until a computer crash occurred and then remediating the failure. In the current competitive market, though, it is a winning tactic to wait until the breakdown occurs.
Being efficient is not fixing faster, but it is knowing problems in advance and preventing them from halting production. This change of active firefighting to active maintenance is the key to reaching the efficiency of your machine to the full extent and recapturing your business.
Proactive maintenance is a philosophy where health is the priority of the assets in question, and this is maintained in advance before we notice the symptoms. Consider it as a health program and not an emergency operation. You do not respond to a blown fuse or a seized bearing, instead you undertake a series of actions with the goal of directed to the cause of failure. It integrates preventative schedules with anticipatory understandings to ensure the equipment operates under optimal parameters.
Efficiency is usually measured in terms of output per hour, but availability measures real efficiency. A machine that operates at 110 percent speed of two-hours and then crashes at four is much less productive compared to a machine that runs at 95 percent in an all-day operation. OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) through proactive maintenance is the stabilization of your OEE by eliminating the variables that lead to stops, slow-run and quality flaws.
A one-way way cannot lead you out of the mess of firefighting in a smooth run, but a plan that is founded on three sound pillars will work. It is a tactic comprising disciplined habits and a high level of data insight, which makes sure that you are tracking problems before they come to haunt your production targets.
You cannot be in control of what you do not measure, and you, by no means, can be proactive in one holding a whiteboard or a collection of spreadsheets. A Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) is your maintenance strategy of the brain, and it converts raw data into actionable intelligence.
Preventive maintenance needs in-depth knowledge towards the history of your equipment. CMMS puts an end to guesswork: instead of having all the details of your operation scattered across a variety of places and times, all the information is centralized in a single digital hub.
The secret of consistency lies in automation. A CMMS takes the brain workload of scheduling off your head and into a trusted system that not even a single task goes through the cracks.
Plugging your software with your machinery will result in a smooth stream of information that will bridge the physical floor with digital management.
Efficiency is not only speed, but it is availability and reliability. A machine which is fast yet breaks frequently is not an asset, but a liability. Active maintenance stabilizes your operations by going against the source of your inefficiency directly affecting your bottom line in two important aspects.
The mathematical argument here is that planned maintenance is a fraction of the cost and time of an emergency repair. By having control over the schedule, you do away with the hustle of part scramble or having to wait till a particular technician arrives to assist you during a shift.
Capital investments in industrial assets are huge. The fastest means of depleting that investment is to run them to failure. Preventive maintenance will put equipment into the necessary working condition so that it can perform in the manner it was designed and minimize the mechanical load that causes premature retirement.
It takes time to shift to proactive and not reactive but with the appropriate tool, the way is laid clear.
Start with the truth. Look at your current KPIs. What is your breakdown rate? What is the time taken in doing emergency repairs? Visualize your backlog using your CMMS dashboard and find out who the bad actors are, the machines that inflict the most pain.
Garbage in, garbage out. You need a clean inventory of assets and parts.
Design the work processes that your team will use.
It is a process and not a place.
The issue with maximizing machine efficiency is not working harder. It is merely about being smarter about working. You need to alter your thinking of taking maintenance as a cost center to a profit protector. Through an aggressive attitude towards work and the ability of contemporary programs, you have complete control over your establishment. You quit fearing the unpredictable silence of the unexpected downtime and begin relishing the predictability of productivity. Today, accept this change and make your maintenance operations your best competitive advantage.
