4 Ways to Eliminate Unscheduled Machinery Downtime in Your Plant

release date: 02/03/2016

tags: OEE, Unscheduled Downtime, Manufacturing

There are a few things that hurt a manufacturing company quite as much as unscheduled downtime. Unplanned downtime in production and delivery of goods and products can not only hurt your efficiency but can also be costly to your business.

Read on to learn four things you can do in-house to manage your manufacturing plant better in order to eliminate unscheduled machinery downtime.

1. Track Downtime to Discover Trends

First things first, it’s going to be hard to prevent machinery downtime when you don’t know why or when it’s happening. Track each time your plant is disrupted by unscheduled downtime, and notate what happened to cause production to stop and when it happened.

By accurately recording this information, you’ll be able to see trends in production and the machinery. Is majority of your downtime caused by user error? Perhaps there’s a certain part causing a piece of your production line to fail every six months?

Once the data is there, it’s easier to find solutions and be proactive to prevent downtime from occurring the same way in the future.

2. Schedule Regular Employee Workshops

It’s widely known that user error is one of the top causes of production downtime. Because of this, it’s crucial to have employees properly trained on how to run and maintain the machinery and its tools properly.

While training upon hire is important, regular employee workshops are equally important. By hosting monthly or quarterly workshops for your team members, you can ensure everyone is up to date on proper protocols, and that everyone knows how to operate and maintain any new machinery or parts.

3. Implement a Regular Machinery Maintenance Plan

Due to the busy nature of factories, it’s easy for regular machinery maintenance to be placed on the backburner. However, it’s a big issue because a lack of regular maintenance takes a large toll on equipment and this will inevitably cause machinery to fail.

The only way to prevent machinery failure is to implement a maintenance strategy, whether you implement it in-house or hire an outside company to manage it for you.

Protech International, for instance, offers service and repair maintenance programs to keep machinery operating at an optimal level through scheduled service, troubleshooting, programming, modifications and machine rebuilding, emergency service, and more.

4. Establish a Relationship with a Reputable Supplier

If downtime does happen at your factory, it’s important to be able to get your machinery up and running again as soon as possible. That’s where this final, more reactive, tip comes in.

Relationships between factory managers and suppliers are becoming increasingly more important. By establishing a reputable relationship with a supplier, plant managers are able to get the high-quality replacement parts they need at the lowest possible price as soon as possible.

This relationship helps you eliminate disruptions by reducing the amount of downtime you have.

Download the eBook, The Foolproof Guide to Improving OEE in Your Manufacturing Plant

Eliminating downtime is important and is vital to improving OEE, or overall equipment effectiveness. In this free eBook, you'll discover exactly what impacts OEE, what is negatively impacting your OEE, and then additional best practices for resolving unscheduled downtime.