In any manufacturing or engineering facility, extracting maximum value from the available assets is at the heart of optimising production performance and profitability.

Equipment which is not functioning effectively — or failing entirely — poses a major issue for companies operating in increasingly competitive marketplaces, where a missed order deadline can spell commercial disaster in the form of a lost contract — to say nothing of the reputational damage which can also ensue.

Any unexpected downtime also comes with its own costs in the form of emergency maintenance, possibly involving the use of external suppliers and the sourcing of spares, often at a price premium, to get machinery up and running.

While production staff still have to be paid even if they cannot undertake their tasks due to the unavailability of equipment.

These issues were amply demonstrated in a report published recently by Oneserve (www.oneserve.co.uk) which estimated the cost of machine downtime to the UK manufacturing sector at a massive £180 billion, with each of the UK’s 133,000 manufacturers on average experiencing an incident of downtime every two and half months.

This equated to an annual cost per company in excess of £60,000 with some manufacturers worse off by half a million pounds or even more.

Some two-thirds of the respondents acknowledged that downtime eroded customer satisfaction, so closely linked to competitiveness in today’s world.

More than half of the downtime was attributed to hidden internal faults. Meaning the identification of these faults, ideally before they occur and finding a way to mitigate against them is crucial to minimising this risk.

Plant maintenance has often been a mainly reactive process, with parts run until they failed and then replaced.

However, the drive to optimise productivity, reliability and to consistently deliver against schedule commitments means this approach has become outdated.

The focus has switched firmly to the proactive management of the maintenance and servicing of plant equipment. In essence the approach is one of preventative maintenance – taking deliberate, planned steps to minimise the risk of failure of mission-critical equipment before it can happen.

Instead of the cost of individual parts being at the heart of decision, total cost of ownership (TCO) of plant is now the main driver.

A variety of techniques are typically implemented in a preventative maintenance programme, with activity centred on time-based, condition-based or usage-based monitoring.

Regular tasks are undertaken such as checks on critical equipment, oil and filter changes and lubrication, with the condition of equipment recorded.

Undertaking this regularly provides maintenance teams with vital information on the rate of deterioration of critical parts, and therefore the likely date at which they will fail – allowing them to schedule shutdowns at convenient times for replacement of individual components, routine maintenance and servicing, or a complete overhaul.

A strategy can also be put in place to look at alternatives for parts identified as ‘bad actors’ – those which do not reach their expected service life or require regular interventions.

In the long term, this approach has been proven to be far more cost-effective than a strategy based on ‘run to failure’, as the risk of unanticipated failure of equipment, with all its associated issues, can be virtually negated, while Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) is optimised.

Equally important to remember is that robust maintenance procedures are vital in helping companies ensure they comply with both equipment warranty requirements and legally binding industry regulations.

The two main areas of regulation in the surface treatment sector are the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 (PPUWER) and the Health & Safety Executive’s (HSE) Control of Substances Hazardous to Health.

Properly implemented, preventative maintenance helps to safeguard employees against the risk of injury from equipment failures and from chemical spills, leaks and fires – negating the risk of further downtime, reputational damage and potential legal ramifications.

Attention should also be paid to the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) which govern the maintenance and condition of air and fume extraction equipment, and the ‘Consent to Discharge’ regulations embodied in the Water Resources Act 1991 (amended by the Environmental Act 1995) which governs the use of water treatment systems and the discharge of effluent.

So how can a preventative maintenance strategy aimed at reducing unscheduled downtime be optimally applied in a surface finishing facility? In the main, equipment used in these facilities falls under three main categories: automated lines, manual lines and fume extraction systems.

Automated and manual processing lines typically cover processes such as cleaning, chemical etching, electroless plating, electrolytic plating, hard or chromic anodising, tartaric sulphuric anodising (TSA) and conversion coating, such as alocrom or phosphating.

Usually designed to fulfil application-specific requirements, fume extraction systems are employed to control pollution and emissions and fulfil biological monitoring.

Each type of plant is subject to a variety of potential threats to its operation.

For example, any damage to the physical integrity of a process tank creates a potentially significant health & safety and environmental issue.

This issue can result from a number of causes such as residual stress from welding and fabrication; an uneven surface finish which can result in localised corrosion, as well as brief incidences of rapid crack growth resulting from short-term heat stress during cleaning operations.

Overheating equipment is liable to unanticipated and catastrophic failure. This often emanates from the failed operation of heating and cooling elements.

In the worst cases, this can cause a fire – an even greater risk in sites where flammable chemicals are in use - resulting in potentially terminal damage to both equipment and the building fabric.

Chemical spillages and leakages, either during handling, or as a result of inadequate or failing pipes, valves or pumps, can cause severe damage to nearby plant equipment which is not sufficiently protected against this risk, to say nothing of the health & safety ramifications for production operatives working in the area.

Meanwhile, fume extraction equipment, if not properly maintained, can subject employees to unsafe levels of noxious gases and other health hazards such as a legionella threat.

Perhaps most important of all, however, is the impact of wear and tear resulting from routine machinery operation.

Virtually any component in moving equipment will eventually wear and, if not replaced, is liable to fail without warning, leading to potentially catastrophic failure of the machinery and significant unscheduled downtime.

To guard against the risk of these issues and associated downtime – or at least to be in a position to proactively manage the deterioration of parts – a regular, planned programme of maintenance and servicing is essential.

Strict testing should be undertaken on all moving parts in mechanical operations, as well as tanks structures.

In electrical, control and automation applications, gauges, sensors and control devices must also be inspected regularly to ensure they are functioning optimally.

Similar rigorous attention should be paid to the condition of current feeds and the physical integrity of cabling and trunking.

These procedures, coupled with thorough analysis of the ongoing condition of components, will make a significant impact on reducing the risk of unscheduled downtime resulting from unplanned or catastrophic component failure and instead enable a proactive approach with regular scheduled plant stoppages for major tasks or system overhauls.

Whatever the size and make-up of the surface engineering facility involved, the effects will be immediate and positive, reducing TCO and delivering a long-term impact on productivity, quality and commercial performance.

There are different types of service and maintenance outsourcing support available in the market. As a leader in the supply of metal surface treatment, NDT and process water recycling plant, NHE offers a holistic approach to complex process plant servicing and maintenance, offering a tiered structure suited to different operational requirements.

By outsourcing the maintenance of process plant to a specialist provider, manufacturing facilities can take reassurance from the fact they are taking steps to improve critical asset reliability and performance and avoid costly unplanned downtime.

This will create peace of mind for business leaders and allow them to focus on improving other areas of business performance.

For more information on NHE, visit: www.nhe.uk.com