“This is costing us ‘x’ amount of thousands of pounds an hour in downtime”
Words we’ve all been too familiar with, but there are instances where this is an actual genuine statement, at Deritend we know there’s a need for solutions to be put in place to counteract ‘that’ scenario from happening.
With the Midlands economy enjoying a very buoyant time in the Automotive sector it goes without saying that the local supply chains are also thriving, but along with that comes the challenges of meeting the high demand with the first call usually being to ‘ramp up’ production 24/7, this alone is presenting new challenges to the maintenance teams which have the painstaking task of keeping the plant efficient and productive.
Preventative Maintenance Techniques
A leading Tier 1 UK manufacturer, providing pressed body assemblies to one of the UK’s largest car manufacturers were one of many companies that we have worked closely with to improve production and have implemented preventative maintenance techniques we offer, they quickly embraced the DC motor and critical item service scheduling we recommended, and more so trusted us and our expertise to release critical press DC motors upon our detailed quarterly inspection reports and inline with their production runs… but this was not enough, after having one unit suffer ‘catastrophic failure’ in the middle of the night with no spare, we realised that they were still vulnerable, if these critical items were burnt out or suffered such catastrophic failure etc, not a simple repair, on a long lead time and new units being up to 14weeks delivery….
The plan now was to source and hold a critical stock inventory which would be held at our Wolverhampton facility, we learned early on that the DC motor plates were not strictly true/exact as the press manufacturers had adapted force vent units, a decision was made to keep the units at our Wolverhampton facility with 24hr access, with a quick inspection on despatch of the replacement unit making sure of the direct replacement for the fitters waiting onsite.
Our client has now purchased over 100k of critical spares with Deritend with another 30k about to be signed off, on top of this 7 new presses are being installed and will require critical items to be added, spares to be purchased and held. All these spread over a monthly payment contract, but not only are there benefits from a quick turnaround of these items, we have found the relationship between both companies strengthen as we are as much a part of their maintenance team as there own staff, working along side the team to meet the modern production challenges.