Have you noticed that 99% of Chinese factories do not perform preventive activities? Here are a few examples:
They don’t work collaboratively with manufacturing engineers when designing a new product, to make sure it is easy to make.
They don’t study their processes and try to remove opportunities for errors.
They don’t think of serious safety issues and try to avoid them, until they have an accident.
They wait until a machine is broken down and can no longer be used to ask a technician to repair it.
Let’s look into the last point. How could they avoid waiting for a machine to break down? Well, there are many ways to do this.
They could have a technician open, lubricate, and clean the machine every 3 weeks (or on whatever schedule that makes sense). That’s a maintenance plan and it results in having the machines down for regular checkup at times when it doesn’t slow production down.
They could keep the environment clean and paint the machine in white or yellow, so that any leakage is easy to spot.
They could ask the machine supplier for the “mean time to failure” of the most fragile parts of the machine, and change them (or check them much more often) before that date arrives.
>> Read our in-depth guide into preventive maintenance here:
How A Preventive Maintenance System Cuts Costs In Chinese Factories <<
How to set a plan that addresses the main sources of issues under the right schedule? Here are a few pointers:
Guidelines are available for purchase on the internet – for example on the ANSI website.
Process specialists can help, from experience. Our consultants often help manufacturers set up the right plan.
An analysis of past breakdowns and micro-stoppages, and their causes, is a great start… If those data are collected.
Yes, markedly.
Will it move uptime to 100%? Of course not, for two reasons:
The equipment still needs to be down regularly for planned activities. But the key is, it should be down at time when it doesn’t impact production.
There are other issues to tackle in order to keep machines running: quality issues, correct feeding of materials, availability of manpower, etc.
