It isn’t the million-dollar question, but it comes close: What steps can your company take to cut maintenance costs?
Newer businesses frequently struggle with company property maintenance costs. Their overarching goal is to make a profit. However, mismanagement of equipment maintenance costs them a lot of money. So, how exactly can a business cut maintenance costs?
Following are some helpful hints for lowering maintenance costs.
Eschew breakdowns
Preventing malfunctions is, unsurprisingly, the most effective way to reduce maintenance costs. Not only is it expensive to repair damaged equipment, but it also means that your operations must slow down or even come to a halt to accommodate the repair work. But how do you avoid breakdowns? Without a doubt, you should invest in a good preventive maintenance strategy, ideally in a CMMS or, better yet, an Intelligent Maintenance Management Platform (IMMP) capable of scheduling, tracking, and reviewing all technical operations.
Maintain A Good Preventive Maintenance Program
Inspection is the single most important aspect of maintenance. This entails knowing what you’re looking for and making certain that your equipment meets the manufacturer’s specifications. For example, is the Zeolite 13X or belt in good working order?”
In addition to describing the correct specifications for various equipment components, your owner’s manual can be used to create a preventive maintenance schedule. The issue with servicing a machine every few months is that the amount of time you use it varies. Servicing an item every 30 days, for example, could indicate that you are over-or under-servicing it in terms of actual hours.
In addition, review the results of preventive maintenance checks regularly. Depending on the condition of the service item, you may find that you need to reduce the service interval or that you can extend it.
Train Your Operators
Operators are in an ideal position to identify problems and make minor repairs and adjustments because they work directly with the equipment daily. Make certain that your operators accept responsibility for their equipment and are properly trained in performing daily and weekly checks and caring for their machines.
Maintenance supervisors and mechanics can receive training from equipment manufacturers i.e industrial robotic manufacturers. They can then train the operators. An experienced and knowledgeable equipment operator can also assist a new operator in learning maintenance tasks such as inspection and lubrication. Because memories aren’t very accurate, make sure the operator follows a checklist when performing this service to ensure that nothing is overlooked.
Select The Best Technology
Even though your phone occasionally freezes and your computer requires a quick fix using the failsafe “On-Off” approach, technology is an advantage to your organization and should be exploited. Consider (or, worse, attempt) to analyze all of your maintenance activities one by one with a pen and pad of paper.
Purchasing a lower-cost machine may end up costing you more in the long run than purchasing a higher-quality, more expensive machine that will last much longer. At the same time, it makes no economic sense to spend more money than necessary to repair a piece of equipment. Spend no more money on repairs than the machine’s residual value, or what you’d get if you sold it today. For example, rather than replacing an engine, it may be more cost-effective to invest in a new machine with better technology that will last longer.
Increase The Warranty/Insurance Duration
Nothing works perfectly. It is usually a good idea to insure your most costly equipment or to extend the warranty on certain things. This will save money not just on upkeep but also on costly repairs. In certain circumstances, you may even want to cover individual components – consult with your specialists to determine which insurance is best for your company.
Understand And Adhere To Safe Work Procedures
It might be tempting to cut corners to finish the job quickly. However, if there is a severe accident or technicians are wounded, this might be a costly error. Above all, we must ensure that technicians and equipment operators get and adhere to sufficient safety training and are provided with proper protective equipment.
Reduced maintenance costs and downtime are sometimes linked with decreased safety or service; however, this is not the case! Reducing Maintenance Costs is all about better managing your maintenance strategy and planning. That is, you would spend a little additional time scheduling work orders, which would greatly improve workplace safety.
Improved Management of Unplanned or Breakdown Maintenance
We should plan for extra time to handle such tasks. This means that we divide each day or week into categories for planned maintenance.
For example, category A (must be completed), category B (should be completed soon), and category C (nice to do). In short, we will schedule unplanned maintenance around the time of category C or even category B maintenance as needed.
As a result, it may be possible to avoid cascading maintenance issues and the associated continuous firefighting. More information can be found in “7 Breakdown Maintenance Planning Tips With CMMS Software.”
Conclusion
Many businesses’ equipment maintenance expenditures can be high. Do not allow this to happen to you! Read our Top 7 Maintenance Cost-Reduction Tips to get started saving money right now.