Take Advantage Of Holiday Shutdowns By Scheduling Your Robotic Preventative Maintenance

Sched­uled Shut­downs: The per­fect time for pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance and process improve­ment projects.

In order to remain com­pet­i­tive in the glob­al mar­ket, man­u­fac­tur­ers rely on sched­uled shut­downs to com­plete projects such as; pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance, automa­tion process improve­ments, and robot upgrades. This per­mits skilled main­te­nance crews the abil­i­ty to com­plete crit­i­cal projects with­out impact­ing the pro­duc­tion schedule. 

A well-man­aged pre­ven­tive main­te­nance pro­gram will uti­lize shut­downs to ensure unplanned pro­duc­tion down­time is min­i­mized by com­plet­ing pre­ven­ta­tive tasks on sched­ule. It is impor­tant to fol­low the equip­ment man­u­fac­tures pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance sched­ule in order to pro­long the life of your equip­ment. Neglect­ing to com­plete the rec­om­mend­ed P.M. will lead to cost­ly unplanned down­time, pre­ma­ture fail­ures, loss of data, and qual­i­ty defects. 

Tra­di­tion­al­ly there have been two major shut­downs that occur annu­al­ly. The week between Christ­mas & New Years and the week of July 4^th typ­i­cal­ly do not have pro­duc­tion sched­uled, thus mak­ing them ide­al for project work. These shut­downs are typ­i­cal­ly used for large scale pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance, process improve­ment projects, or mod­el changeovers. 

For small­er projects that require more than just a two-day week­end, there are sev­er­al long week­ends through­out the year that can be uti­lized. Good Fri­day, Memo­r­i­al Day, Labor Day, and Thanks­giv­ing are all long week­ends that when planned prop­er­ly, can be used for com­plet­ing small­er projects. 

Plan­ning is crit­i­cal for any shut­down project. Fail­ure to plan for projects that have a tight win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty can end up being cost­ly. Fail­ure to com­plete a project on-time can impact pro­duc­tion tar­gets and/​or quality. 

Items for con­sid­er­a­tion when plan­ning a shut­down project:

Iden­ti­fy a Project Man­ag­er: The PM is expect­ed to plan, orga­nize and exe­cute the project. This is the per­son that will keep the project on bud­get, on sched­ule, and do what is nec­es­sary to fol­low through with the plan. 

Plan­ning: Cre­ate a detailed sched­ule with mile­stones and action items iden­ti­fied. Review the sched­ule and plan with the team before the project com­mences and revise as need­ed. Each project team mem­ber should be aware of their spe­cif­ic respon­si­bil­i­ties, project work­flow and schedule. 

Safe­ty: Every project has poten­tial safe­ty haz­ards; a com­plete site safe­ty plan is impor­tant to ensure a safe out­come. Com­plet­ing a haz­ard assess­ment pri­or to start­ing the work will ensure your project is planned with a Safe­ty 1^st men­tal­i­ty. Review­ing safe­ty plans with your team will keep every­one on their toes and work­ing safe­ly. Robots​.com makes safe­ty pri­or­i­ty one with all projects we undertake. 

Items to keep in mind when devel­op­ing your safe­ty plan:

• Per­son­al Pro­tec­tive Equip­ment require­ments (PPE)
• Lockout/​Tagout (LOTO)
• Fire & Com­bustibles Watch 
• Per­mits or Cer­ti­fi­ca­tions that are required 

Prop­er Train­ing: Train­ing spe­cif­ic to the project must be iden­ti­fied and com­plet­ed pri­or to the project com­menc­ing. Fail­ure to have the right skills for the project will be cost­ly if not iden­ti­fied in the plan­ning phase. This includes under­stand­ing safe oper­a­tion of the robots or oth­er equip­ment, under­stand­ing what is required to com­plete the pre­ven­tive main­te­nance and specifics on how to per­form the planned repairs. With more than 35 years of expe­ri­ence, Robots​.com prides itself on being an indus­try expert in robot part repairs.

Grease Analy­sis: Each axis should be con­sis­tent­ly checked and re-greased when nec­es­sary. Prop­er­ly lubri­cat­ed axes help to pre­vent pre­ma­ture wear from exces­sive fric­tion, vibra­tion, and heat. Mon­i­tor­ing iron con­tent with a grease analy­sis is impor­tant for iden­ti­fy­ing poten­tial prob­lems and pre­vent­ing cost­ly fail­ures. An increase in the iron con­tent can be an indi­ca­tor of a poten­tial prob­lem. Per­form­ing grease sam­pling before a planned shut­down helps main­te­nance engi­neers pri­or­i­tize work based on Pre­dic­tive Main­te­nance Met­rics such as; Mean Time to Fail­ure (MTTF) & Mean Time to Repair (MTTR).

Required Inven­to­ry: A well-planned inven­to­ry of the need­ed parts will avoid project delays. Lead times for miss­ing parts can be cost­ly to the sched­ule and bud­get. If you do not have need­ed spare parts in stock, plan to place your order well enough in advance, in order to receive them on time. Robots​.com takes pride in help­ing to ful­fill those hard to find items. We have thou­sands of new and recon­di­tioned robot parts in stock. Most orders have same day ship­ment avail­able and are backed by our full warranty. 

Com­mon parts to con­sid­er when plan­ning a robot main­te­nance project:

• Mem­o­ry Card or USB for backups 
• Con­troller CPU battery 
• Manip­u­la­tor batteries 
• Grease
• Gear oil
• Con­troller air filter 
• Cables & Harnesses 

Exe­cute: Fol­low the plan and sched­ule. Audit the plan and sched­ule to man­age the project. Adjust as required and be ready to imple­ment con­tin­gency plans as need­ed. Always com­plete a prop­er check out of the equip­ment before hand­ing it over to production!

Lessons Learned: At the com­ple­tion of a project, a Lessons Learned ses­sion should be con­duct­ed, with the entire team. These lessons will be invalu­able for process improve­ment and effi­cien­cy of the next project. 

Cel­e­brate the suc­cess of a well-exe­cut­ed project! By being proac­tive at man­ag­ing risks, by tak­ing care of robot­ic main­te­nance, can be the dif­fer­ence between suc­cess and fail­ure! Excelling at project man­age­ment of shut­down projects will ensure max­i­mum uptime and pre­vent cost­ly downtime.

Con­tact Robots​.com experts for any ques­tions you may have or spare parts you need.