How To Reduce Plant Maintenance Costs
Finding new ways to cut costs is one of the most important tasks for a manager — industrial manufacturing managers are no different.
At first glance, reducing maintenance costs without sacrificing reliability seems impossible, but minor tweaks to your processes can result in significant savings over time.
Want to learn more? Here are ways that plant managers are saving on industrial tank cleaning and maintenance costs.
Get the Right Equipment for the Job
It makes sense — the right, fully-functioning equipment helps your employees and automations work harder and faster.
While settling for cheap equipment or systems might sound like a good idea to reduce costs, it will result in higher maintenance costs and inefficiencies. More repairs take money out of the company’s bottom line — plus more inefficiencies that could turn into costs in unexpected ways. For instance, a failure to minimize waste could result in higher disposal costs.
One example of optimizing your performance with the correct equipment would be using a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) that can notify you when maintenance is coming up before any issues occur.
While investing in a system may cost more upfront, it will reduce costs over time.
Poor equipment can also cause damage to your plant assets or products.
Review your current tools and systems for maintenance and cleaning to evaluate where you can improve maintenance such as saving with industrial tank cleaning.
Simplify Your Cleaning Process
Review the process you have in place for cleaning your plant assets.
If your process is too complex, chances are you’re either wasting time or workers are looking for ways to cut corners. This creates problems on both ends of the equation.
In the first scenario, inefficient processes make routine tasks take longer. This means you’re not only paying for more of your employees’ time, you’re also paying a higher opportunity cost by allowing your assets to stay inactive for longer periods of time. On the other hand, if your employees are looking for ways to cut corners, they could be exposing themselves to danger and increasing your liability.
Because of this, it is important that your processes:
- Are designed to mitigate risk and potential failures
- Have enough documentation to avoid the need for extrapolation
- Clearly explain the most efficient way to complete any given task
- Account for external variables
Outsource Your Plant Maintenance
Relying on in-house strategies involves a trial and error process — but one mistake could cost hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in losses.
Instead, consider hiring a company that specializes in plant maintenance to take over your maintenance tasks.
When it comes to chemical tank cleaning in particular, hiring a company like Ecorobotics to complete your robotic tank cleaning will ensure cleaning gets done right the first time. It’ll also cut down on the time your plant is shut down for maintenance, reducing costs in the long run.
Outsourcing your maintenance and cleaning will relieve duties on your end and allow you to focus on other areas of plant operations.
Schedule Your Cleaning
Scheduling your tank cleaning and plant maintenance will keep you proactive and off the back foot. A clear and detailed schedule for cleaning will make your plant safer and more reliable.
When issues pop up, you spend time investigating where the issue occurred, shutting down the plant, and losing money while you’re not in production.
Keeping on top of preventative maintenance will also extend the life of your plant equipment and assets — but waiting for a problem to arise will cost more time, money, and effort.
Start Saving Money on Your Plant Maintenance
Knowing where and how to save money on plant maintenance can be overwhelming, but by following these steps, you’ll increase efficiencies, lengthen the lifetime of your equipment, and make standard operating procedures easier on your workers.
