Routine inspections along with due maintenance and repairs keep a print facility run efficiently. Routine repairs could be avoided if the facility makes use of quality equipment. Standardized procedures must also be followed. If this is done, production will increase. Labor costs will be reduced.
Routine maintenance is necessary for every print shop. The machinery must undergo servicing every week or every month. The number of maintenance times needed every month depends on the equipment's nature. The use of equipment also determine the intervals after which the machine will undergo maintenance checks. Proper servicing is needed to reduce downtime. This makes servicing a valuable task. Care should be taken to ensure that the service being performed is an optimal one.
Optimizing maintenance and accompanying inspections
Print shops can use identical metrics which are used by repair shops to measure the equipment breakdowns and their performance. This task needs accurate collection of data. Print machines at the shop will be subjected to a thorough analysis. The needed software programs should be tailored to the kind of equipment used. This programs will assist you to optimize the service intervals.
Primary metric in this case is the Mean Time Between Failures or MTBF. It helps to find out the rate of failure for every equipment group with the followed facility routine, If the MTBF is low, then the time between the servicing could be lengthened. If the MTBF is high, it means that the equipment has worn out. The repair parts are of poor quality or faulty procedures are being followed.
Buying is better
The Mean Time To Repair or MTTR is created to measure how long the routine repairs take for each set of operation. A few of the equipment could end up totally out of service. This could happen due o large dismantling requirements. These issues may not be present in other machines. Paucity of parts available or a lack of skilled maintenance engineers must also be factored in MTTR.
It is evident that failures will show up more in older equipment. They need more routine repairs. The print shop must analyze the available collected data to find out where break point is for any replacement. In case the machinery frequently fails, production time is lost. Labor and repair costs become higher too. It is apparent that buying new equipment will save money compared to keeping the old machines running.
