Hearing your machinery come to a grinding halt or your computer screen suddenly turn black is the stuff of nightmares for every business owner. Business downtime can be expensive, but unplanned downtime is often even more costly and stressful to deal with.
Figures show that manufacturing downtime in the UK alone can cost up to £180 billion each year. This equates to an average loss of £31,000 and 49 working hours per company.
Many different scenarios can cause downtime within a business. With so many potential causes of downtime, it is impossible to prevent them all. However, it is possible to take steps to avoid the likelihood of downtime occurring in the first place. Here are some tips to help you prevent downtime from causing your business issues:
Keep Up With Equipment Maintenance
Equipment failure is a leading cause of downtime in manufacturing businesses. When an equipment failure occurs, it can lead to long periods of downtime while you wait for an engineer to be called and for them to attend to diagnose the issue. If additional parts are required to repair the machine, your downtime can be extended further.
Keeping up with a regular maintenance routine is an excellent way to keep your equipment in the best order. Having a maintenance schedule in place should make it so much easier to spot the first signs of an issue and take action to get it repaired. Implementing a maintenance schedule and then ensuring you stick with it could help to save you significant amounts of time and money.
Install Sensors
The signs of equipment failure are not always easy to spot. Early detection of potential mechanical issues is essential as these problems can quickly become a health and safety risk that could harm your employees. Spotting problems quickly can also help to prevent them from getting worse. But in a busy factory environment, it can be challenging to detect issues such as a machine sounding louder than usual. However, there are steps that you can take to resolve this.
Installing sensors is an excellent way to detect mechanical problems quickly. Sensors, such as a Level sensor, can detect issues fast and alert you to potential problems. This means that you can act quickly before the machine causes harm to your employees and leads to significant downtime.
Train Your Employees
Sometimes, downtime can be caused by human error. Failing to operate equipment correctly can lead to it malfunctioning or becoming damaged. The best way to avoid issues relating to human error is to ensure that your team is thoroughly trained and equipped with the knowledge needed to operate the machinery correctly.
Ensuring that only trained employees are allowed to use the equipment and supervising all new employees in the early stages after completing their training will help to safeguard both your employees and your equipment. Following up the initial training with refresher training sessions each year is also beneficial when trying to improve workplace safety, increase efficiency and minimize downtime.
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