STG FINANCE IS HERE TO HELP YOU.
The Christmas/New Year break is a perfect time to get your machinery serviced and ready for action when 2023 kicks off.
Where did 2022 even go? The winter is long gone and here we are in the last month of the year! It’s been a busy and wild one; and 2023 is shaping up to be even busier. With that long-awaited Christmas/New Year shut-down looming, now is the best time to plan your annual maintenance schedule and take advantage of the downtime to get your kit in tip top condition.
At STG Global we love getting our customer’s machines into our service facilities to give ‘em the ol’ once over. So here are a few ways you can take advantage of the holidays to get your gear in shape while you get your gear off at the beach.
The Philosophy of Maintenance.
The type of industry that you’re in will define the types of maintenance that your plant and equipment will require. You might operate in a highly corrosive environment such as mining or beside the ocean. Alternatively, your gear may be subjected to lots of stop/start work, such as garbage collection or long periods of high-revolution running such as PTO-operated pumps or generator engines.
Regardless of the work environment, choosing the correct maintenance plan can be an important way of minimising down-time and avoiding the unnecessary consumption of spare parts and consumables.
In general terms, maintenance regimes can be divided into four categories.
Corrective Maintenance
That busted hose that you’ve had bound up with gaffer tape and tie-wire since March… time to get it fixed. Sometimes, those on-the-spot fix-it jobs work fine when you’re under pressure and need to keep going, and occasionally the best repair jobs are the ones where you cobble together the necessary parts to MacGyver your way through a project.
No matter how well you’ve tied that Cobb & Co twitch, sooner or later it’s gonna give way, even with a cost-effective temporary repair. However, without proper maintenance, a catastrophic blowout or failure may occur down the line, and the resulting cost of a big repair job can far exceed the cost of getting a smaller fault fixed properly. A corrective maintenance programme will list repairs that need to be done so they can be taken care of before they can cause bigger (and more expensive) problems.
Preventative Maintenance
This type of maintenance is carried out at predetermined intervals and may take in a selection of different factors such as oil changes, filter replacement, lubrication, and drive belt inspection. Oftentimes this type of maintenance is carried out as part of a warranty programme requiring the machine to be serviced at certain intervals following purchase.
Preventative maintenance can also include such things as renewing anti-corrosion coatings, checking and repairing wiring looms, and re-calibrating electronic systems. Maintenance cycles such as this aim to reduce the chance of failure or diminished performance during the period between each inspection, and to prolong the working life of the machine.
The Christmas/New Year break is a perfect time to perform preventative maintenance as it occurs at a set time of the year when machinery is guaranteed to be idle.
Risk-based Maintenance
This type of maintenance relies on accurate record-keeping along with integrated analysis, measurement and periodic testing. Maintenance type and frequency can then be assigned to each piece of plant or equipment depending on the work that the machine is doing.
For example, a digger may have the welds on its bucket inspected occasionally to pick up any hairline cracks or sloppy couplings caused by heavy work such as rock breaking. Alternatively, a machine such as a vacuum truck might have its seals inspected at set intervals based on how much work it has been doing and the type of material it has been sucking up.
A risk-based maintenance framework might be set up to look something like this:
- Collect data. For each identified risk, data needs to be collected to provide information about the risk, what the consequences of it might be, and what methods can be employed to mitigate it.
- Evaluate risk. Each risk can be evaluated according to how likely it is to occur and what its effects on the operation would be.
- Rank risks from highest to lowest. This enables you to decide which repairs need to be undertaken immediately and which ones can be left until the next inspection cycle.
- Create an inspection plan. This can take the form of an on-going condition monitoring plan for less urgent repairs, and a preventative/restorative plan for maintenance that has to be taken care of straight away.
- Propose mitigation or repair. Now that you know what you are dealing with, you can assign each piece of plant to the appropriate repair facility or engage technicians to visit your workplace to implement on-site repairs.
- Reassess. What worked; what didn’t work? How efficient was the maintenance process and can we schedule these risk-based maintenance checks into our preventative maintenance framework?
Condition-based Maintenance
OK…let’s cut to the chase here. That “check engine light” that’s been lit up on the dashboard of the ute since 2014: well, that’s a perfect example of condition-based maintenance right there! On-board detection equipment and sensors are installed to provide an indication of when servicing is required.
Maintenance should be carried out whenever indicators give the signal that equipment is deteriorating and the risk of failure is consequently increasing. This maintenance strategy can drastically reduce the long-term cost of repairing a serious breakdown that could have been avoided if Bruce, the machine’s operator, had just told you that a warning light was on!
Don’t Forget the Shed…or The Yard.
With no-one around to get in the way of the property maintenance crew, the end-of-year break is a perfect time to get your work base tidied up.
Critters and leaks
Having your workshop and sheds cleaned, bird-proofed, re-painted or insect-proofed while everyone is away on holiday makes sense. Use this time to get the spoutings cleaned out, any leaks repaired and maybe even get some new signage installed.
Do the hard yards
Potholes are a pain. So are overhanging trees, long grass and general junk. Every yard needs tidying up occasionally, so use the summer break to get Groundskeeper Willy around to fill in the holes, get rid of the old drums and what-not, and give the grass a mow.
Happy Holidays.
The summer holidays are a time to relax, reconnect with your family, recharge your batteries and forget about work for a while. So organising your plant maintenance to coincide with this is an excellent way of minimising the time your gear is idle when the New Year kicks off. But you have to be organised. After all, the people who maintain and service plant and machinery will also be wanting some time off over the Christmas/New Year period.
STG Global has a network of qualified and dedicated maintenance and repair facilities across Australia. We can organise to have your gear maintained and back to tip top condition ready for when you turn the key on the first day back at work in 2023.
To see the locations closest to you, you can read all about STG in Australia here: (link to article)