Equipment failure is a common phenomenon. Its impact can range from minimal production losses to catastrophic shutdowns. In some industries, equipment failure can lead to heavy production losses and safety implications. There are numerous reasons why industrial equipment breaks down. In order to avoid the serious consequences of unplanned downtime, you need to understand why your plant or factory experiences equipment failure. The following are some common reasons for equipment failure and what you can do to improve your situation:
Lack of industrial preventive maintenance (PM)
Industrial machines demand regular maintenance. Unfortunately, most industries undermine the importance of preventive maintenance and consider it an optional business process. Just because your equipment is in great working condition doesn’t mean you can delay maintenance. Your senior workers are not always in a position to identify potential problems. Before your equipment fails entirely, work towards developing and implementing an effective and realistic preventive maintenance strategy.
The early phase of equipment failure often goes unnoticed as you don’t have professional maintenance experts in your team. When you don’t have a team of professional maintenance experts to take care of your machines, your equipment will suffer a lack of efficient maintenance planning. If you don’t have an in-house staff to plan and execute a preventive maintenance strategy, hire a maintenance company to help you detect and resolve complex mechanical and electrical issues. It’s hard for any business to stay ahead of the curve if the equipment is not operating at maximum operational efficiency.
Preventive maintenance is not a one-time business process, rather it’s an ongoing function that should never be stopped or ended. Regular tune-ups will help you extend the lifespan and performance of your equipment. The function of a PM plan is to highlight minor issues with inexpensive solutions before they turn into a costly breakdown. Moreover, a strategic approach towards preventive maintenance can help industries bring about up to 30% reduction in maintenance and energy costs.
Poor reliability culture
When it becomes really challenging to handle the pressure from the top and you have to meet production targets, one popular approach to fix small problems is the use of band-aid solutions while planning to permanently resolve the problem when things calm down. The problem is that things never calm down to an extent where you have all the time to revisit the work. Ultimately, short-term solutions lead to complete failure sooner or later. This is why it’s important to ensure equipment reliability and timely maintenance. Don’t let bad reliability culture make you spend millions of dollars on downtime and shutdowns every year.
About Quality Millwright
Quality Millwright provides industrial preventive maintenance expertise to a diverse range of industries and helps them ensure a failure-free future. Schedule your next preventive maintenance now or contact us for more information!