When Production Demand Picks Up Is Your Company Ready?04/20/2017As of this writing, the forecast for economic growth is more favorable than it has been in some time. Consumer confidence is up and U.S. manufacturing is projected to increase faster than the general economy. This should translate into more demand from manufacturing facilities, bring more machinery online and increase the output of equipment already in production. While this is certainly good news for manufacturers in the U.S., preparation must be made to ensure the plant’s machinery is able to handle the increased demand. For a plant’s maintenance department, many issues must be addressed such as: * What will it take to get mothballed machinery ready for production? * Is an inventory adjustment required for spare control equipment to ensure uninterrupted production of current machinery AND additional equipment that must be brought back into service? * Are there any machines currently in service that are running, but have a known problem which hasn’t been addressed due to low production demands? These are just a few of the often overlooked issues that deserve consideration. The alternative to confronting such concerns which are considered minor before demand increases, is to have them become a major issue later. With today’s “just in time” manufacturing & inventory strategies, downtime of production machinery can be critical in terms of meeting customer order deadlines. In extreme cases this delay in order fulfillment can create customer relation issues, including loss of future business. As many maintenance personnel are aware, it is often after a holiday or other shutdown that many problems occur with plant control equipment. This is especially true for machinery that has been out of service for some time. A very common issue encountered during machine startup is that a control will not power up after being down for a day or two. Here at PES, we have repaired thousands of controls that experienced this exact symptom. Beyond providing the repair solution for our customers, we have also helped them identify controls that are prone to this type of problem, and recommended actions to be taken that would help minimize the additional downtime caused by these failures. A recent example of this is a customer whose plant has many Allen Bradley controls. The customer has one series of Allen Bradley AC drives that has often experienced issues due to aged power supply capacitors. As long is power is applied to these controls, they will work fine but if power is turned off for a day or more, they will not power back up. Our recommendation to the customer was to have the older controls in service refurbished by a capacitor replacement as possible, and to make sure all of their spare controls were repaired and ready to take the place of any that fail when the plant production started back up. During an initial shutdown the customer pulled all controls that had been in service for several years and not yet repaired (the ones likely to give problems) and sent them in to be refurbished. In addition, several weeks before they do their yearly shutdown for vacation and maintenance, the customer rounds up all of their defective Allen Bradley units and sends them to PES for repair to ensure they are on their shelf and ready when needed, which is usually upon startup after the shutdown. This has helped them reduce costly downtime that they had previously experienced during startup, and has resulted in a great relationship between this customer and PES. This is just one example of why it is important to choose a service company that not only provides quality repairs of industrial controls, but also works with their customers to communicate about common problems they observe. Identifying these reoccurring problems can help a customer pinpoint system issues that need to be addressed which are causing control equipment to fail prematurely. This type of relationship is very beneficial to a manufacturing plant in that it helps reduce maintenance costs, downtime and other expenses. PES is here to help you. When production demand picks up, is your company ready? AND do you have a service company who works to help you? Call on the experts with the best service at 800-732-4695. Back To Blog
When Production Demand Picks Up Is Your Company Ready?04/20/2017As of this writing, the forecast for economic growth is more favorable than it has been in some time. Consumer confidence is up and U.S. manufacturing is projected to increase faster than the general economy. This should translate into more demand from manufacturing facilities, bring more machinery online and increase the output of equipment already in production. While this is certainly good news for manufacturers in the U.S., preparation must be made to ensure the plant’s machinery is able to handle the increased demand. For a plant’s maintenance department, many issues must be addressed such as: * What will it take to get mothballed machinery ready for production? * Is an inventory adjustment required for spare control equipment to ensure uninterrupted production of current machinery AND additional equipment that must be brought back into service? * Are there any machines currently in service that are running, but have a known problem which hasn’t been addressed due to low production demands? These are just a few of the often overlooked issues that deserve consideration. The alternative to confronting such concerns which are considered minor before demand increases, is to have them become a major issue later. With today’s “just in time” manufacturing & inventory strategies, downtime of production machinery can be critical in terms of meeting customer order deadlines. In extreme cases this delay in order fulfillment can create customer relation issues, including loss of future business. As many maintenance personnel are aware, it is often after a holiday or other shutdown that many problems occur with plant control equipment. This is especially true for machinery that has been out of service for some time. A very common issue encountered during machine startup is that a control will not power up after being down for a day or two. Here at PES, we have repaired thousands of controls that experienced this exact symptom. Beyond providing the repair solution for our customers, we have also helped them identify controls that are prone to this type of problem, and recommended actions to be taken that would help minimize the additional downtime caused by these failures. A recent example of this is a customer whose plant has many Allen Bradley controls. The customer has one series of Allen Bradley AC drives that has often experienced issues due to aged power supply capacitors. As long is power is applied to these controls, they will work fine but if power is turned off for a day or more, they will not power back up. Our recommendation to the customer was to have the older controls in service refurbished by a capacitor replacement as possible, and to make sure all of their spare controls were repaired and ready to take the place of any that fail when the plant production started back up. During an initial shutdown the customer pulled all controls that had been in service for several years and not yet repaired (the ones likely to give problems) and sent them in to be refurbished. In addition, several weeks before they do their yearly shutdown for vacation and maintenance, the customer rounds up all of their defective Allen Bradley units and sends them to PES for repair to ensure they are on their shelf and ready when needed, which is usually upon startup after the shutdown. This has helped them reduce costly downtime that they had previously experienced during startup, and has resulted in a great relationship between this customer and PES. This is just one example of why it is important to choose a service company that not only provides quality repairs of industrial controls, but also works with their customers to communicate about common problems they observe. Identifying these reoccurring problems can help a customer pinpoint system issues that need to be addressed which are causing control equipment to fail prematurely. This type of relationship is very beneficial to a manufacturing plant in that it helps reduce maintenance costs, downtime and other expenses. PES is here to help you. When production demand picks up, is your company ready? AND do you have a service company who works to help you? Call on the experts with the best service at 800-732-4695.