Maintaining your equipment isn’t just a good idea, it’s the best interest of your company, its customers, and its employees.
Commercial equipment suffers bit by bit each day from heavy usage, which means all those moving parts won’t stay shiny and new for long. When (not if) equipment breaks, your entire production line may come to a grinding halt until you can fix the issue, and there’s no way of knowing when you’ll be up and running again.
Because your equipment won’t maintain itself, you need an action plan to ensure that no machine is overlooked when it comes to performing routine inspections and maintenance.
Your company’s reputation may depend on it.
It stands to reason that well-maintained machines will continue working as they should. When you have a proper maintenance strategy, you get the peace of mind that there is significantly less chance of a part breaking or failing.
Machine availability and reliability play into your company’s profitability. Without a crucial piece of your operations, you might miss order fulfillment deadlines, or become backlogged on new orders. As a result, your reputation for reliability may take a hit.
Simply put, every machine failure can initiate a chain reaction which affects profits, productivity, payroll, marketing, sales, and other areas of your company. A little maintenance can go a long way in preventing minor problems from turning into larger, more expensive issues.
Maintenance strategies provide a guide to ensure every machine receives the care and attention it deserves. Your plan can tell you which pieces of equipment need servicing, which date to perform the service, how long each inspection or repair will take, and any other information you collect about each task.
As an added benefit, you can plan your daily tasks ahead of time to keep your team productive and allocate resources effectively. You’ll always know what’s on your agenda any given day, as well as that of your employees to maximize your department’s performance.
It sounds like a lot of work creating and organizing a maintenance strategy, and truthfully it can be. It’s not a task to take lightly since your company’s well-being is riding on your ability to keep machines and equipment functioning properly.
To relieve part of this complexity, many companies are turning to Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) to facilitate their strategy. When you use a CMMS, you eliminate the guesswork associated with routine maintenance.
Your CMMS may include checklists of things to inspect on each machine or piece of equipment, notes regarding each inspection or repair, an inventory of parts or supplies used on each machine, and other data to streamline your work. This means you have everything you need to operate an efficient strategy with minimal involvement after you initiate it.
Work orders, reminders, inventory levels, and other data are generated by the system and made available to anyone who has access to it. This sharing of information means each team member has the resources he or she needs to feel confident about their work and perform assignments as quickly and accurately as possible.
Using CMMS software gives you a systematized approach to maintenance so that you never miss a beat. It might just be the thing you need not only to create your strategy, but also to follow it.