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Helping Your Assets Operate More Efficiently
You know only too well that “boots on the ground” are becoming harder and harder to come by. Especially if you want them to be worn by skilled maintenance engineers. Cost-cutting, the Nineties’ apprenticeship gap and an aging workforce have all contributed to a shortage of skilled manpower, compounded by ever more complex assets and systems demanding increasingly specialist skills.
Whether you have a one-off, relatively straightforward job that needs completing – re-aligning a drive, say, after an in-house motor repair – or there’s a longer-term scheduled project you need help with, you’ll know the challenges of being under-resourced and over-worked.
Sometimes you need “firefighters” who turn up when the alarm sounds, douse the flames and leave. But you know you’ll see far more long-term benefit from the engineering equivalent of a Fire Prevention Officer: someone who will get involved before there’s a problem, will take the time to understand what you want from a project, process or asset, and then work out the best way to help you achieve it with enhanced reliability, greater productivity, and increased profitability.
In terms of engineering and technical services support, this could include identifying and analysing problems, looking for the root causes of excessive costs or inefficiencies, and gathering data as a basis for proposing solutions. In other words, helping you to eliminate problems rather than simply control them.
Unfortunately, as you’ve probably noticed, the solution you’re offered isn’t always in your best interests.
Talk to a parts supplier and – funnily enough – their solution will be a new part. Talk to a repair specialist and (what do you know?) they’re likely to recommend a repair.
One advantage of talking to a supplier with a solution-neutral approach, like ERIKS Technical Services, is that you can benefit from expertise in all areas. So whether the most appropriate solution for your issue is repair, or replace, or upgrade, you’ll receive a totally impartial answer that’s right for you.
A safe pair of hands
When a job is ready to proceed, inviting engineers onto your premises – even if they’re going to improve asset reliability and productivity and cut your costs – isn’t something to be done lightly. In every industrial facility, there are Health and Safety implications to consider.
That’s why, as well as boots on the ground with engineering credentials, you need ones with Health & Safety accreditations.
All ERIKS Technical Services and On-Site engineers, for example, have up-to-date, appropriate Health & Safety certificates. They also ensure a full risk assessment is undertaken, and a method statement and a statement of work is written, before any work is done. They’ll even flag-up any evident existing health and safety issues before they start.
In the event of catastrophic failure, using a specialist such as ERIKS actually reduces the risk of accidents compared with your own in-house team – possibly overworked and certainly undermanned – trying to cope with the problem and with time pressures too.
Asset Management vs Just Managing
The more closely you involve experienced, qualified, solution-neutral technical services experts in caring for your assets, the more your assets can do for you: in terms of reliability, productivity and reduced total cost of ownership.
With the help of ERIKS Technical Services foresight and insight, together you can identify and analyse potential problems before they become critical. And then find solutions that deliver reliability, predictability and practicality.
Of course this requires more than just boots on the ground and extra pairs of hands. It also requires safety helmets with wise and experienced heads wearing them. And a full set of skills supported by comprehensive resources and specialist expertise. All things that ERIKS Technical Services can bring to your business.
Want to read more...?
Why not take a look at the latest edition of our magazine, Know+How, packed with the latest industry news, reliability improvements and best practice
Reliability is a buzzword that is seemingly always on the tip of industry tongues, but it’s clear that businesses need to be more proactive in their attempt to maximise their assets.
In this issue, we look beyond equipment, but at processes, systems, strategy and communication.
For more information on Engineering, Repair and Replace solutions please contact your local ERIKS Service Centre, who will be happy to discuss your options.
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