Acquiring and maintaining heavy equipment is quite a costly affair. Managing heavy equipment efficiently is critical for company operations. To get your equipment to work optimally you need a good and reliable heavy equipment maintenance program. By following heavy equipment maintenance guidelines correctly, you can extend the utilization of your valuable equipment and can extend the normal lifespan of the equipment. The most important aspect of maintaining heavy equipment properly is dependent primarily on the maintenance services. Machineries use technologies like hydraulics, electronics, pneumatics etc. that require proper maintenance for functioning. Targeted and comprehensive maintenance strategies are useful to justify the capital cost invested in them and operate them optimally. Appropriate maintenance strategies are required to be defined for Heavy equipment. This would ensure that the return on such investment is worth it. 

Categories of heavy equipment

Heavy equipment is a specialized machine which is built for a specific job or for a series of similar jobs. Multiple industrial sectors use this heavy equipment which are as follows:

• Equipment used in agricultural practices like tractors and harvesters
• Rolling stock used in railways
• Trailers 
• Semi-trucks
• Scrapers, excavators, bulldozers as earthmoving equipment
• Stump pullers and chippers used in forestry
• Transporters that are modular in nature and construction business uses cranes

Why proactive maintenance strategy requires to maintain heavy equipment 

Preventive maintenance reduces maintenance cost holistically rather than the reactive maintenance approach, once the equipment fails. If you do repair reactively only when the equipment fails,  then it incurs more cost and also impacts productivity with unplanned downtime. Reasons for Why you would like to shift to proactive maintenance for heavy equipment maintenance are:

Equipment performance would remain at peak

Proactive maintenance would do away with problems like blunt blades which are not being able to cut cleanly, when hydraulics are leaking, heat exchangers getting dirty and functioning less efficiently, bypass valves not having perfect fitting etc.

Extends the lifespan of equipment

By performing the recommended routine proactive maintenance, you can extend the original lifespan of your equipment. Operator training requires for extension of equipment lifespan.

Availability of equipment improves

There is reduction of revenues and surge of cost when equipment does not operate properly. When equipment breaks down suddenly you have to bear the cost of emergency maintenance, excess cost of hiring technicians. Also unplanned breakdown reduces productivity and extends time taken to complete a task. Proactive maintenance reduces the cost of capital expenditure and operating.

Proactive maintenance ensures safety

Whenever there occurs an accident, regulators firstly look into the preventive measures and mitigation techniques that the employees had. Proactive maintenance comes under these mitigation techniques as it ensures that no fatal accident occurs which might cause injury or death.

Reduction in number of sudden equipment breakdowns

Proactive maintenance makes it convenient for the operator as re-planned maintenance steps occur at convenient time and place of the operator ultimately reducing breakdown number.

Tips for heavy equipment maintenance

• Use checklists and SOPs for maintaining heavy equipment
• Go for service packs for standardized jobs
• Equipment operators should use defect tracking logs
• Improvise work traceability
• Improve work accountability
• Tooling and information of service should work centrally
• Emphasise on maintenance metrics and statistics. Go for detailed analysis
• Everybody in the maintenance should know the history of failure of the equipment so that they stay careful while using and prevent further breakdown.
• Go for preventive maintenance
• Have a clear idea about maintenance manuals
• Go for routine check-ups regarding malfunction areas.

Hope this blog has provided you with a basic guideline for heavy equipment maintenance that would be helpful for the future. For further help and information get in touch with DreamzCMMS today.