Manufacturers in any industry have quite a few expenses. Business material, payroll, advertising, and equipment costs add up pretty quickly. One of the biggest costs for manufacturers, however, is machinery maintenance. Maintenance is critical to smooth operations, but can be expensive if you need to always outsource electrical machinery maintenance.

Understanding electrical machinery maintenance can be beneficial for your manufacturing business. For example, if you need a phototransistor for a certain piece of equipment, you need to know where to source that component.

These little bits of machinery maintenance knowledge can be the difference in thousands of dollars. Let’s dive deeper.

What Is Machinery Maintenance Exactly?

Machinery maintenance is a pretty simple concept on the surface. It is essentially taking stock of your business’ mechanical assets and the maintenance that needs to be done to keep those assets working effectively.

What does this mean? Maintenance refers to servicing equipment, doing scheduled checks, having repairs tended to in a timely manner, and replacing worn or damaged components. If your manufacturing equipment goes down, you are losing money in most cases.

Generally, machinery maintenance is done when something breaks. This is too reactive in the current manufacturing space. Instead, you can utilize maintenance in the form of preventive and predictive ways to ensure your machinery keeps working optimally, day in and day out.

Do You Have A Machinery Maintenance Team?

This is the first step to understanding electrical machinery maintenance better. Typically, there are three main types of workers on a maintenance team. Let’s explore these a bit further.

• Maintenance Technicians: Technicians are a little different then the run-of-the-mill mechanics you may have, or bring in, to fix manufacturing equipment. Maintenance technicians examine equipment using technical computer software and devices to ensure things are operating at high performance levels. If they find an issue, they will find a solution. They may even do the repairs themselves, depending on the extent of the problem.

• Machinery Mechanics: Mechanics are what keeps your manufacturing equipment operating at maximum effectiveness. They often maintain equipment, but the main role is to fix anything that may break down. This is where the problem may be for your business, because mechanics are often reactionary. It is important to give your maintenance mechanics the ability to be proactive.

• Industrial Millwrights: Industrial millwrights have a more versatile role than mechanics and technicians. They do repairs on equipment, but they will also assemble, install, break down, and move equipment as needed.

Maintenance Training And Needed Certifications For Your Manufacturing Business

There are certainly a lot of trades that you can tap into when it comes to machinery maintenance and electrical maintenance on industrial equipment. However, you want to ensure your team is properly trained, skilled, and have the certifications that state and federal governments look for during inspections.

Not understanding this part of machinery maintenance can be very costly for your manufacturing business. Training programs are normally held at trade schools, community colleges, and even universities. These training courses prepare your team for many types of maintenance issues.

What about certifications? Your local governments, and sometimes the federal government, requires manufacturing business owners to have maintenance certifications, or employ those with the proper certifications. These certifications are usually given by the Society for Maintenance and Reliability Professionals (SMRP).

What Industries Utilize Machinery Maintenance?

If industrial or manufacturing equipment is involved in your business, you can be sure that you will utilize machinery maintenance. It depends on in-house or outsourced maintenance. Hopefully after you understand more about this space, you will have a stronger in-house team. This can save you a lot of money down the road.

The following industries rely on maintenance professionals:

• Product manufacturing
• Auto manufacturing
• Apparel production
• Food and liquid production
• Tech (ecommerce) manufacturing
• Refineries
• Steel Mills
• And More

The type of manufacturing you do will specify the types of maintenance team you will need to build. For example, the type of equipment used in food production is very different from the type of equipment used in apparel production. The machinery, in a sense, defines the type of team you need.

Do You Have Machinery Maintenance Under Control For Your Manufacturing Business?

This is a very important question to answer. The amount of money spent each year on maintenance can impact your bottom line significantly. Sure, you can get away with outsourcing technicians and mechanics for a while. But if you plan to grow and stay competitive, you will need a team.

If you already have a team, ensure they have continual training and the proper certifications to keep productivity and efficiency optimized. This goes for any industry.