Tag Archives: Planned Maintenance

Given that powerful equipment and trucks frequently operate close to one another, warehousing is one of the riskier industries. Rapid growth in e-commerce is driving an ever-increasing demand for the delivery of products in shorter time frames. Industrial and commercial warehouses must meet this demand while maintaining the present standards for safety.

There are thousands of reports of injuries, illnesses, and deaths in the warehousing industry annually. Many of those are the result of industrial mishaps such as slips and falls, exposure to dangerous products, and defective equipment. Warehouse safety should be the employers’ utmost priority to keep employees safe, ensure efficient operation, maximize productivity, and minimize injury or damage.

Best Practices for an Efficient Warehouse

Preventive Maintenance

The majority of occupational dangers can be avoided by taking the following precautions:

• Recruitment & Training
• Safety Equipment & Precautions
• Hygiene & Pest Control

Planned Maintenance

Periodic maintenance can minimize equipment downtime and reduce maintenance costs. The fundamental maintenance advice listed below should be adhered to in order to maintain your warehouse operating at maximum capacity:

• Have A Maintenance Plan
• Stay Vigilant
• Ask Employees For Their Opinion

By regularly monitoring your warehouse equipment, spares, and procedures, and promoting the well-being of your personnel, you’ll not only increase the productivity of your warehouse, but you’ll also cut your losses if there’s an emergency or an accident. Make sure your warehouse is as secure as it can be by working with your staff.

The infographic below by 2Flow takes a look at ‘Creating A Safe & Efficient Warehouse’.

[click to enlarge]

If you need help with creating a safe and efficient warehouse in your facility, contact us today.

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A proper Asset Performance Management (APM) plan ensures that your critical revenue-producing assets operate smoothly, efficiently, and at or near their rated capacity.

Asset Performance Management is the broad, systematic planning and control of a physical resource throughout its operating life. It includes the specification, design, construction, operation, maintenance, modification, and ultimately, disposal. Its principles apply to any industry with mission-critical assets, and is best implemented with support from the top-down and bottom-up. The entire organization should be involved, and supportive to ensure that it is executed properly.

Methodologies used in APM

• Asset Reliability – The process of ensuring that assets continue to do what they are needed to do, when they are needed to do it.
• Reliability-centered Maintenance (RCM) – Used to determine the activities necessary for the asset to operate properly by focusing on maintenance tasks that mitigate against the consequences of failure.
• Maintenance Management – Adherence to a benchmark of world-class maintenance standards and practices.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Enabling Technology

A vital step in implementing an APM plan is establishing, tracking, and analyzing KPIs. This is what takes a maintenance plan from reactive to proactive. The close management of leading and lagging Key Performance Indicators helps increase the likelihood of driving measureable results without significant capital investment.

Important KPIs include:

• % of planned maintenance work, and completed.
• % of unplanned/emergency maintenance work.
• Proactive work as % of planned maintenance work.
• Actual maintenance hours vs. planning estimate.
• Overall equipment effectiveness.

Having the right technology tools are needed to measure and analyze this data. USC Consulting Group has helped clients optimize their existing tools or install computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS), ERP systems, and USC’s own proprietary Lean Information Control System (LINCS) to ensure that this data is used effectively.

Benefits of Asset Performance Management

In addition to increased uptime, shorter turnaround times, greater throughput and lower maintenance costs, organizations have seen improvements in their EBITDA by 15-25%.

Learn more about how APM can improve the performance of your revenue-producing assets by downloading our eBook Asset Management: The Rise of Reliability.

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