ACMA maintenance services to minimize your equipment downtime
How maintenance can give you peace of mind
In the context of industrial manufacturing, maintenance is key. It is not limited to technical checks and cleaning but also involves servicing, repairs and replacing spare parts to extend the machine life cycle. Most importantly, maintenance reduces breakdowns and machine downtime, boosting the quality of the output as well as the overall equipment efficiency (OEE).
Unfortunately, many companies overlook maintenance and end up paying a high price for this mistake. It is not a theoretical scenario, but a real issue that inevitably happens to all customers falling behind schedule. If, for instance, a customer is not up to date with the maintenance program, the equipment will begin to show qualitative defects and component misalignment and, after a while, even wear and tear due to the lack of proper polishing and lubrication.
What initially looked like a waste of time and resources would have instead helped the company save capital. It’s important to remember that every time a machine breaks down, not only does it require expensive repairs, it also stops making money in the meanwhile.
Preventive maintenance versus tailored maintenance
ACMA can offer several different maintenance programs to its customers, also including preventive maintenance and tailored maintenance. The former, also called scheduled or regular maintenance, consists of pre-programmed routine activities carried out at set dates in time. The latter involves custom services that are specific to complex plants, tailor-made customer's machines or regular ones run with extra effort (e.g. operating machinery working consecutively for six months without any stop). Both minimize the need for the so-called episodic maintenance, i.e. repair activities that are performed during an emergency to fix the damage.
None is better than the other. Regardless of the client's use case, preventive maintenance is always a necessity: however sophisticated the machine might be, productivity will always go down without continued care.
Preventive maintenance, a complete program to preserve your machine
Preventive maintenance, also called scheduled or regular, consists in pre-programmed routine activities carried out at set dates in time. This cluster includes:
- Technical documentation: the technical documentation is the one offered to the client once he has purchased a new ACMA machine. It includes user manuals, spare parts catalogue, SAT protocols and other relevant documents. It contains general information about cleaning and ordinary maintenance to guarantee machine performance over time. In the case of the Spare Parts Catalogue, it also contains data about purchasable spare parts of specific serial numbers.
- Spare parts management: spare parts management includes lists of suggested spare parts and materials that can be provided to the client at a moment's notice. Thanks to spare parts management, the customer can rely on the certainty that the spare parts that are more likely to wear out faster will always be available in their inventory. This allows for quicker repairs, avoiding unnecessary downtime.
- Asset Protection Services (Maintenance plan): ACMA offers its know-how, identifying the machine parts that are more likely to wear out at a certain point. The company also suggests what components should be changed and when, to guarantee the best machine performance over time. Furthermore, it gives the option to let ACMA take care of the maintenance interventions, allowing the customer to choose between three different options of maintenance plan.
- Maintenance Kits: maintenance kits are kits composed of a series of spare parts related to the same machine group or machine area. Kits available on a specific ACMA machine can be sold all together or individually, according to customer specific needs, to keep the machine performance stable and avoid breakdowns. ACMA also suggests how often the components should be changed, specifying a time schedule for each one of them.
Tailored maintenance, a deep focus on your machine
Tailored maintenance involves custom services that are specific to the customer's machine. This cluster includes:
- Line Assessments: line assessments are visits to the client’s plant performed by ACMA’s expert technicians. These visits have the goal to analyze one or more customer’s machines in order to suggest how to improve their performance and increase their lifetime. The output of such visits is usually a report highlighting the state of the machine and proposing changes, upgrades and production support services that might restore and/or boost the machine’s productivity.
- Training: keeping the machine clean and carrying out maintenance regularly is essential to achieve optimal performance over time. That's why training is so important. ACMA offers several training courses, catering to operators and maintenance workers, with topics ranging from cleanup to maintenance and with various levels of difficulty, from basic up to advanced and customized.
Indeed, ACMA does not solely offer standard training, but also adapts its programs to specific customer's requests and needs. In this case, the content of the course is preliminarily discussed with the customer on a case-by-case basis.
Maintenance is the cornerstone of production planning. Not only does it prevent unexpected emergencies and save you money, it also increases the performance of your machines and the productivity of your company as a whole.
If you’re looking for a partner to rely on when it comes to maintenance services, look no further and contact us.