There is nothing worse or more costly than unexpected downtime happening in your production facility. In fact, according to a study by Oneserve, it is costing Britain’s manufacturers more than £180 billion every year.
The study found that downtime was largely due to:
- technical faults
- the age of machinery
- misuse by employees
- external damage
- poor maintenance
And despite how visible downtime is, companies underestimate how much downtime they experience. And over 80% of companies are unable to calculate the downtime costs.
So, given how crucial compressed air supply is to manufacturing systems, any unintended stoppage could cause a critical problem for operations. Downtime is money. Not only do you have the repair the system, but production gets delayed with potential orders lost.
Real-time monitoring
In a factory there are many machines which need to be checked by engineering and maintenance technicians. How important is the compressed air system on that list? And what happens when you leave the compressor room to do something else? Issues with the compressor often aren’t noticed until they impact on production.
Remote monitoring gives the ability to monitor machines constantly and from anywhere. It provides users with information including:
- temperature
- pressure
- volume
- energy consumption
- loaded hours
- maintenance schedules
Having this information to hand can help identify trends and stay on top of maintenance. This will improve the systems efficiency while preventing system failures.
And whenever there is a serious situation, such as operating errors or temperature increases, users get notified via email or SMS. These warnings enable the issue to be addressed immediately, preventing a system shutdown.
Over Christmas, Direct Air received a critical alert from an iConn enabled compressor at a pharmaceutical facility. We were able to contact their on-shift team and organise for service engineers to resolve the problem. Without this prior warning, on the first day of full production, the customer may have had no compressed air, leading to downtime.
Remote monitoring can save times and money, with instant alerts to faults or required maintenance.
Want to read the rest of our tips? Read the full blog on our website:
Topics we discuss include: https://www.directair.co.uk/news/how-to-avoid-unplanned-production-downtime/
- Predictive analysis & preventative maintenance
- Stand-by equipment
- Working with compressed air specialists