The drive to prevent downtime

Aging equipment is revealed as a major area of concern in manufacturing.

By Bob Vavra, CFE Media February 5, 2018

It doesn’t surprise us that six of the top 10 stories at www.plantengineering.com in 2017 were about maintenance. We’ve long contended that maintenance needs to be seen as a profit center and not a cost center to ensure the discipline gets the proper attention from both the plant floor team and the corner office.

The 2018 Maintenance Survey will appear in the March issue of Plant Engineering, and while we don’t want to give away too much data too early, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that preventive maintenance still is seen as the best way to improve productivity, keep costs in check and preserve a safe workplace.

And one other piece of data that will reflect on the issue of capital expenditures discussed earlier—44% of readers say aging equipment is the leading cause of plant downtime. That shouldn’t come as too big of a surprise: the 2017 study found 42% of readers blamed aging equipment for increased downtime. And it is a year later.