6 Hacks to Reduce Unplanned Maintenance Downtime

Organizations have a lot going on simultaneously – they need to meet deadlines, ensure consistent production levels, and carry out daily operations effectively. Almost all critical operations depend on various machinery for manufacturing or industrial organizations specifically. If the equipment isn’t working properly, organizations will suffer considerable losses, production disruptions, and unplanned downtime. Thus, organizations and their maintenance managers need to improve asset reliability and ensure preventive maintenance to minimize unplanned maintenance downtime. There are several hacks organizations can use to reduce unplanned downtime – here are just a few of them.

Reducing Unplanned Maintenance Downtime

Empower Machine Operators

Machine operators can be a very useful resource for maintenance management. If trained properly, they can help reduce unplanned downtime. Maintenance managers can make machine operators a significant part of the process by teaching them about basic maintenance and red flags. Moreover, a maintenance management system like CloudApper CMMS empowers operators to report malfunctions and red flags, after which the maintenance team inspects and works on solving the problems. If all the problems are identified and solved before causing serious breakdowns, this can reduce unplanned downtime significantly.

Inspect Well-performing Equipment

Just because a piece of equipment is working properly now doesn’t mean that it will keep working like that in the future. While maintenance managers ensure scheduled maintenance for critical equipment, they also need to ensure inspections, even if the machinery is working properly. Without inspections, underlying problems won’t be identified, leading to unexpected breakdowns and production disruptions. Conducting inspections on reliable equipment helps guarantee consistent performance and optimal production levels, as well as identify hidden problems. Doing so helps reduce replacements, repairs, and unplanned maintenance downtime.

Set Standard Intervals Between Maintenance

Maintenance managers must ensure that the different pieces of equipment are receiving maintenance regularly and as recommended by the manufacturers. If maintenance is scheduled at irregular intervals, equipment will eventually experience problems. For instance, if a machine requires lubrication every three days but gets lubricated every five days, this will lead to overheating, friction, and even breakdowns. That’s just one example of the consequence of not setting standard intervals for maintenance tasks – it varies from one organization to another. Thus, scheduling maintenance tasks at appropriate intervals are necessary to reduce unexpected maintenance downtime.

Use Insights from Existing Maintenance Data to Optimize Maintenance Downtime

Preventive maintenance requires maintenance teams to document everything – scheduled maintenance tasks, emergency repairs, inspections, breakdowns, and everything in between. While keeping all the information for recordkeeping is necessary, responsible maintenance managers are using the information to identify valuable insights for streamlining maintenance and repairs.

Using the information, maintenance managers can identify which equipment frequently fails, the most reliable machines, the most efficient technicians, how a specific problem is solved, etc. Maintenance managers can use CloudApper CMMS to view valuable insights with its customizable dashboard. Moreover, all of the information is kept in a centralized location to be used effectively and retrieved whenever necessary for optimizing maintenance tasks, helping reduce unplanned maintenance downtime.

Ensure Appropriate Components

Critical equipment used in industrial or manufacturing organizations goes through a lot of pressure. However, these pieces of equipment are built so that they can keep performing consistently – as long as they receive maintenance and worn-out components are replaced. Unfortunately, many organizations go for cheaper components, which can hamper the equipment, make it ineffective, and even cause breakdowns. While organizations do so to reduce costs, this will increase repairs and maintenance costs down the line.

Thus, maintenance managers and organizations must ensure that the appropriate components are used for optimal performance and to extend the asset’s longevity.

Utilize an Effective and Customizable CMMS to Reduce Maintenance Downtime

While most organizations are already using CMMS solutions, many are still using obsolete or inflexible ones that are hard to use, hampering maintenance efforts. While many maintenance management systems are out there, CloudApper CMMS is one of the most flexible CMMS software solutions available. CloudApper CMMS can be used from smartphones, is entirely customizable, and streamlines preventive maintenance and repairs. It comes with asset management, spare parts and inventory management, work order management, PM task management, and more – all of which are highly customizable. Maintenance managers, technicians, and authorized personnel can use it right from their smartphones, making preventive maintenance mobile.

CloudApper CMMS can be tested beforehand – sign up for a FREE TRIAL and experience how it can simplify maintenance management at your facility.