subject: Prolonging Equipment Life By Identifying Failure Modes [print this page] Equipment and smaller equipment components, such as rubber o-rings San Diego manufacturing industry experts tell us, fail in all of these operations, and many times the failures are defined at every level. The motor failed because it burned out. The bearing failed because it wore out. The pump seal failed because the gasket seals started leaking. The real reasons these components failed is because of many other more detailed reasons that are usually not determined. There are a number of reasons we don't take the time to look at the real reason the component failed. When the functionality of an entire piece of equipment sometimes depends on its seal systems Escondido-based distributor and manufacturer of seals and related products stresses the importance of proper preventive maintenance.
According to related sources that say the manufacturing and process industry in America spends more than $700 billion a year in repairs and maintenance. In general, this money is spent to keep plants operating and making products to sustain their profit margins. This article examines how this money is spent and whether or not it is being moved into the business profit margin. Here are a few of the reasons why don't we ask more questions when we have equipment failures.
One reason is industry culture. We have created cultures in many plants that if the equipment components fail, make sure we have spares and get them changed as quickly as possible. Another reason is that we are reactive. We do most of our repairs in a reactive state, so we must have parts and we must do the repairs quickly and without much precision in the work process. Lastly, there is a general lack of training to teach people how components fail and, more importantly, how to keep them from failing. Programs such as root cause analysis (RCA) and Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM) can be educational processes for critical plant equipment and lead to longer life cycles of the components like high performance seals.
Through a team effort, the RCM process examines processes and determines how the components in a plant can fail, have failed and will fail. Then, the process determines ways to predict the failure, prevent the failure and eliminate the failure. This process scares many companies away since it requires people and time resources, and the objective is to run hard and make money. But in most cases, the running hard step is leading to more downtime, short equipment life cycles and money losses to the bottom line. For more information on components such as O-rings, sealing systems, engineered rubber and plastics components, please contact http://real-seal.com/.
Prolonging Equipment Life By Identifying Failure Modes
