Don’t Have a Frequent Flyer Program for Motor Repairs

Do you track repeat repairs and perform any sort of analysis on them? For example, the 50 hp drive motor on Line B has been replaced three times in the past 12 months. Each episode ties up two maintenance techs and costs four hours of downtime. How is that any different from one episode that ties up six maintenance techs and costs 12 hours of downtime? In terms of expended resources and lost revenue, there’s no difference.

Motors do not normally fail. So when one does fail, you need a root-cause analysis to solve the reason for the failure. Nearly every motor failure is a maintenance failure.

Some types of recurring failures are of the “nickel and dime” sort, but those coins add up to big bucks. One way to keep on top of this is to create a monthly Pareto analysis of repairs over the past year, and use it to decide which problems to focus on.