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Process Equipment Breakdown - Whats Next?

rotary lobe pumps
by Eric Lunsford
February 22, 2016

Break downs happen, sometimes they are totally unavoidable. Other times breakdowns are just a matter of time – caused by a mistake made during reassembly after routine maintenance, or worse still not doing the required maintenance at the appropriate time (I’m shocked but it happens far too often).

With that said, here few steps to getting yourself back on track after a break down in the most efficient way possible.

Step 1: “Don’t Panic.” Douglas Adams

To me it always seems like the best first step – because when people are panicked, they don’t think clearly… this can lead to poor decisions being made, spending money unnecessarily or spending more money than you should to rectify a problem.

I’ve seen my share of breakdowns where someone in the organization has panicked and overestimated the value of the downtime and ended up spending far too much money to get back too little productive time.

Which leads us to:-

Step 2: Understand the value of your downtime. 

Once you’ve accepted that you’ve got a breakdown – there will be associated downtime. And you need to know what that is worth to you in a profit/loss sense.

  • How much fixed and variable costs will I incur?
  • How much productive time will I lose?
  • What orders, production capacity am I sacrificing?
  • How will this affect my customer relationships? (assuming the downtime leads to missed production deadlines)

Knowing these sorts of things in advance gives you a great indication of what contingency investment should be made – what parts should you have on site ready to install… what you can wait to order in.

Step 3: Get the right person for the job

At Pye-Barker, we help our maintenance clients by carrying a lot of the parts inventory so that they don’t have to – allowing them to save money while still being able to get back online faster.

The other thing to remember is we don’t just repair the products we distribute. We will repair just about anything we can get a manual and parts for – which can be useful when you need a piece of equipment repaired NOW.

All our techs are all factory trained for our full range of blowers, pumps and air compressors. I recommend this practice. I’ll explain why.

We sold an air compressor to a client some time ago and they didn’t engage us for the maintenance of the compressor. The company they chose to do the maintenance, wasn’t factory trained. Oddly enough the compressor starts having problems… Their service rep comes out and diagnoses the problem as

“The air end” of the compressor. Replacing the air end would be about another $29,000 not to mention the time lost.

Thankfully the customer gave us a call and asked for a second opinion. Turns out it was a $375 part. Our tech put it in the new part and they were back online.

It’s also important to note that replacing the air end of the compressor wouldn’t have fixed the issue either.

If you do have a breakdown then we are ready and able to assist you to get back online. Get in touch with our service & maintenance division at 404-363-6000 and we will get our best tech for the job on site as soon as we can.

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Forest Park (Atlanta) Address:
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Forest Park, GA 30297
FAX: (404) 361-8579
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