Hapa Preventive Maintenance

Full cost control in the service area

Preventive maintenance can save significant costs and prevent unplanned downtimes

In order to achieve a significant reduction in operating costs as well as a noticeable increase in Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), manufacturers should not focus just on the current production plants and direct cost savings. "Preventive maintenance can play just as important a role," says Selami Ayhan Head of Services at Hapa. "Based on our experience, overall operation costs can be reduced by up to 15-20%. This is a remarkable percentage, especially when you consider the elaborate measures that are usually required to achieve such a high level of savings."

The reasons are obvious: when a manufacturing process is designed purely for reactive maintenance, it’s a given that unplanned production downtimes on certain lines simply need to be tolerated. This results in production needing to be rescheduled, which in turn involves manual effort and, not least, a considerable use of human resources, such as extra shifts and overtime. Unplanned downtimes are often prolonged and even more cost-intensive for the company if, in an emergency, service specialists cannot be on site quickly enough, express surcharges are due or suitable spare parts are unavailable at that time. 

Preventive maintenance can effectively prevent unplanned downtime and help utilize production resources in a more balanced way. At the same time, the lifetime of individual machines is extended and their efficiency and performance are maintained at the highest level. This also has a direct influence on customer satisfaction and on occupational safety. In addition, users can significantly reduce their own inventory of spare and wear-and-tear parts, which in turn means less storage space and less effort needed to manage these parts. The costs incurred due to preventive maintenance are also transparent, and they can be budgeted from the outset and allocated precisely to individual machines. "This allows our client to have an improved cost control with each of our systems," says Selami Ayhan.

Because preventive maintenance is carried out at defined intervals, these appointments can also be planned from the very beginning. The preventive maintenance schedule can then be arranged so that the measures are carried out at times when the plants are not operational anyway; this in turn serves to relieve both the staff and the budget. "Experience shows that maintenance costs can be reduced by up to 30% by switching from reactive to preventive maintenance, depending on the characteristics of components to be maintained as well as existing maintenance strategies," KPMG, a management consultancy, recently stated.

Hapa customers also benefit from the fact that preventive maintenance is always a comprehensive service, from inspecting the systems and replacing wear-and-tear parts to software adjustments, recommendations and updates. When the machine is recommissioned, a print test is also carried out. At the end of the maintenance period, the customer also receives a detailed report on the state of the machine and the preventive work that is done. "Direct communication with a Hapa service technician on the premises is also tremendously valuable, because that technician can always give a production team valuable practical tips,” the Hapa Service Manager says. "Conversely, it’s important for us to be close to our customers’ actual production conditions. This will allow us to continue to customize our service offerings so that users get the most out of them." Discover more about Hapa’s preventive maintenance offer and get in touch with our experts.

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