Maintenance Tip #1 – Daily Inspections
Maintenance Tips from IROCK’s Technical Support & Service Coordinator
Take the Time
Daily Inspections:
Two issues are right up there with all of us: safety and saving bucks. So, let’s make sure everyone on your team is thinking about both things when they show up to the job site. And the place to start is with the daily equipment inspections.
Safety is everyone’s responsibility but that being said, a lot rests on the shoulders of the equipment operator. Taking the time for thorough equipment inspection, walking around, and looking for spillage or wear is critical to spot an unsafe situation just waiting to happen at start-up. That analysis may save an injury or maybe even a life. At the very least you would hate to miss an avoidable MSHA violation just because you didn’t take that extra five minutes.
The saving money aspect to the daily inspections is pretty obvious as well. How much money could be saved, if, let’s say, a belt splice was repaired before it failed during a production run? Or the belt scraper is worn to the point where the rubber is gone. What happens when the belt splice runs past that scraper? The dollars pile up pretty quickly when that happens.
Another important aspect of daily inspections is housekeeping. We all know spillage happens. How we react to spillage makes all the difference. Do we clean walkways? Do we try to find the root cause of the spillage and correct it? Let’s do a little math, imagine your crew must shut down 20 minutes early every day to clean out areas where spillage is occurring. That equals one hour of lost production during a five-day workweek. If your crew averages 500 TPH, at an average of $7.50/ton it works out to $3,750 in lost revenue. (We all know that none of us work only five days, so my calculations are low, but you get the point.) The moral of the story is that it is safer and cheaper to take time for daily inspections to find the root cause of problems before they are catastrophes.
For service and support for any of your crushing, screening or conveyor needs you can contact sales@irockcrushers.com. Working with IROCK is like pressing the “easy button” when tasked with performing interval inspections. We understand that our OEM responsibility is paramount to our customers’ success. Taking the time to create and provide our dealers and customers with checklist resources to ensure their jobs are successful even before they start is fundamental to us. We are committed to being your primary resource for comprehensive equipment checklists to assist in identifying maintenance issues that require attention before they turn into major issues.
Howard Malhado
Technical Support & Service Coordinator
