Downtime is expensive. Each minute offline can cost your plant thousands of dollars in lost production, labor, and depleted inventory.
Calculating how much downtime you can afford helps determine the actions your plant needs to take before the unexpected outage occurs. Outside of scheduled downtime, how many unplanned hours offline can your plant take without breaking a sweat?
The answer is almost always zero, so we would like to highlight 2 strategies for avoiding unplanned downtime: leverage your planned downtime and measure everything.
Need support now? Contact us here for emergency repair services.
Make the Most of Your Planned Downtime
Effectively planning outages is the key to avoiding unplanned downtime. Your maintenance strategy should include planning outages well in advance. If this year’s planned outage doesn’t lay the groundwork for next year’s planned outage, you have missed a significant opportunity. Start planning early, so you can make informed decisions about flexible plans that can be adapted as new issues arise. Consider any action items that should be prioritized to optimize reliability and efficiency.
Your planned outage is one of your greatest opportunities to address issues in a controlled environment. Using this time to your advantage can significantly minimize the risk of future downtime.
Measure Everything
If you can measure it, you can manage it. Continually measure your systems from end to end. From fan vibrations to pressure differentials throughout your system, a detailed record of variations will help you identify abnormalities before equipment fails. Not only will you know there’s an issue, but you will also know precisely where the problem is originating.
This can help you avoid unplanned maintenance outages. You may only have to make a slight adjustment in your operational controls. The most efficient plants we work with know their process and equipment and continually monitor them for indications of potential problems on the horizon.
Time is Money
Even with the best planning and preparation, protecting your plant from every unfortunate situation is difficult. If failures happen, your business can suffer. Reliability, flexibility, and immediate response is critical when it comes to repairing your equipment and getting you back online.
Last year, we worked with a plant that called us for repairs on a raw mill ID fan. Within 48 hours, our experts had conducted an assessment, performed the necessary repairs, and had the fan back in operation. Learn more about this emergency response here.
We can support your plant in outage preparation, general maintenance, and emergency repairs. Our priority is to ensure your operations are running smoothly and efficiently to meet and exceed production goals. Call us at 800-226-3267 for emergency services or contact us here for a service quote.