What you don’t repair you destroy is the title of a new Rexroth report on maintenance in the UK. It might have messages for the rest of us, too.
Alastair Johnstone, managing director of Bosch Rexroth UK, said that the issues pointed out in the report could affect British productivity.
What are the issues in question?
- Machines aren’t repaired until they break.
- Engineers receive a measly five days a year of training, on average, even though we’re in a time of enormous technological change.
- 3/4 of the respondents said that their machinery is more technically complex, but half also said that their maintenance budget has not increased — in fact, more than one third of respondents said the maintenance budget has decreased.
- Nearly 40% describe their maintenance program as “reactive,” and ongoing maintenance often consists of inspection.
- It’s all about the downtime. Machine downtime is the top KPI, followed by production days lost. Still, one engineer said that when there’s no downtime, he’s told that he’s “overdoing maintenance.” Something breaks? Then of course it’s his fault.
- 37% use third-party repair even for critical machines.
We know that some of these issues are affecting U.S. factories, too. We can tell by the number of calls we get from engineers who’ve been pressured into getting their repairs done at Bob’s Repair Shop and Live Bait, and only when the entire plant has come to a screeching, smoking halt do they give us a call.
Rexroth machinery can last for decades with no problems at all. But it makes sense to think about factory reman for machinery that’s older than the engineers in the company. Call us to discuss your maintenance needs for Rexroth electric motion control, new or legacy. A plan for keeping your machinery in trim is better than waiting till something breaks.