If you use hydraulic equipment in your line of work, you know how important avoiding downtime is. If your equipment isn’t working properly, you can’t be productive until the necessary repairs have been made. This may prevent you from serving your clients to the best of your abilities. As a result, they’ll likely choose to work with one of your competitors in the future.
Luckily, there are numerous steps you can take to minimise equipment downtime. They include the following:
Coordinate with a Hydraulic Repair Service
Hydraulic equipment is just like any other type of equipment: over time, it can break down. That’s difficult to avoid entirely. Instead of hoping the inevitable will never happen, you’re better off contacting a repair team specialising in hydraulic services. Having a repair contractor readily available is key to addressing equipment issues when they arise.
That said, you shouldn’t merely settle for the first contractor you find. You need to know you’re coordinating with reliable experts who can provide the hydraulic engineering services and repair work you need on a consistent basis.
You should seek out contractors who have years of experience, and a proven track record of providing their clients with impeccable service. This is key to your peace of mind. Again, you may not be able to completely prevent equipment problems, but you can reach out to experts for help when problems develop.
Conduct Regular Inspections with Hydraulic Engineering Experts
Hydraulic equipment is prone to breakdowns because it contains many moving parts. Every component needs to be properly maintained in order for an entire piece of equipment to function as it was intended to. Even if a relatively small and minor component fails, it could affect the performance of the entire piece of equipment.
This is a good reason to schedule regular inspections with professionals offering hydraulic engineering services. They’ll thoroughly check all your equipment, identifying any minor issues that need to be addressed before they develop into more significant problems.
Don’t underestimate the value of this. Some people might think scheduling inspections isn’t a smart use of their organisation’s funds, believing the money would not have been spent wisely if an inspection doesn’t reveal any issues.
That’s an understandable assumption to make. However, it’s rooted in faulty logic. Remember, equipment downtime can be very costly for your organisation. Loss of productivity (and the potential loss of entire clients) is far more expensive than an inspection.
It’s also worth noting that, like all complex equipment, hydraulic equipment can be dangerous to operate if it isn’t maintained. This is yet another reason why you should schedule inspections on a regular basis. By doing so, you’ll be taking essential steps to boost the safety of all your employees. This may even be a requirement in some cases if your organisation must comply with applicable regulations.
Ensure Everyone Receives Proper Hydraulic Engineering Training
Obviously, it’s important that all your employees understand how to properly operate and maintain all pieces of equipment they may use in their work. You can’t be productive if team members don’t know how to use the equipment correctly.
Additionally, if someone doesn’t understand how to correctly operate and maintain the equipment, they may operate it in a way that causes damage or results in malfunctions. Knowing this, you should consider thorough training to be a smart business investment.
This is another instance in which making the right investment now can help you avoid much more costly problems in the future.
It may be necessary to coordinate with an outside party if you wish to provide your employees with a genuinely valuable training programme. You may not have the time or expertise necessary to train them on your own.
Again, if you decide to go this route, make sure you research your options to confirm you’re working with experts who will deliver quality results.
Invest in Back-Up Hydraulic Engineering Equipment
Remember, although proper training and maintenance can help you avoid equipment issues, you may not always be able to prevent them from arising entirely. Luckily, when you coordinate with a contractor offering repairs and related hydraulic engineering services, you’ll be able to address these issues relatively efficiently.
That said, repairing any type of complex equipment does take time. When the necessary repairs are being made, you can’t afford for work to stop. Because of this, you may want to rent or invest in back-up equipment. While your primary equipment is undergoing repairs, you’ll still have access to replacements. This is key to avoiding productivity losses due to equipment issues.
Understand the Lifespan of Your Equipment
When coordinating with experts offering hydraulic services, it’s important to take advantage of their knowledge and expertise. This is an opportunity to ask them questions that will help you better understand what you can do to further reduce the odds of equipment downtime being a major problem.
For instance, no piece of equipment lasts forever. This is as true for hydraulic equipment as it is for your home’s heating and cooling equipment. As a piece of equipment gets older, it will start to break down more frequently. You can of course guard against this by prioritising additional maintenance when a piece of equipment is reaching the end of its lifespan.
You should ask experts about the typical lifespans of the pieces of equipment your organisation uses. Doing so helps you develop a more thorough and accurate maintenance schedule. If you know one piece of equipment is getting older and will be more prone to breakdowns and related issues than others, you can focus on inspecting it more often than you may have in the past.
Of course, knowing how long your equipment is supposed to stay in good working condition will also help you prepare to replace your equipment ahead of time.
Keep Records of Equipment Performance
It’s important that your organisation have a system for monitoring the condition of your hydraulic equipment. Whenever an inspection is complete, keep a record of all essential information the inspection may have revealed. You should also keep a record of any minor performance issues employees may have noticed when using the equipment.
Keeping a record like this makes tracking your equipment’s performance and condition much easier. You can check the record on a regular basis, determining if any trends indicate a particular piece of equipment is starting to fail.
Once again, avoiding downtime requires addressing minor problems early. A developing issue could result in a full breakdown if you don’t identify and correct it fast. When you have a record of your equipment’s performance, identifying and addressing these issues early is a relatively easy task.
Review the Cause of Problems with Hydraulic Engineering Experts
Of course, when a piece of equipment stops working properly, the most important thing to do is contact your hydraulic services contractor to schedule the necessary repairs. However, simply scheduling the repairs isn’t enough. After an issue has been corrected, you also need to coordinate with experts to determine what caused the problem to develop in the first place.
For example, perhaps you’ll find one of your pieces of equipment stopped working because a particular component failed. That component may have failed because you didn’t prioritise inspecting it carefully when performing maintenance tasks. Thus, you may have overlooked a problem you would have spotted if you’d checked that component more closely.
Knowing this, you can revise your maintenance routine accordingly, paying more attention to that component in the future. This doesn’t simply help you prevent that specific piece of equipment from breaking down again; it also helps you prevent all pieces of equipment that include that component from breaking down as well.
This is an essential point to keep in mind. Again, to some degree, you may not have the ability to entirely avoid malfunctions and breakdowns. What you can do, however, is to learn from them when they occur. The more you learn, the less likely you are to experience these difficulties in the future.
That said, when you do need hydraulic services, once again, you need to know you’re coordinating with experts you can trust. At HP Hydraulics, based in Hampshire, that’s exactly what you’ll find. If you need expert repairs, insights, or related services, we’ll be happy to provide them. To learn more about what we can do for you, contact us online today, or phone us on 01329 828 877.