June 25, 2025
If your motor is failing mechanically, there’s a high chance you’re dealing with a bearing issue. And while that might sound simple, the story behind those failures is anything but. HECO’s in-shop technicians have reviewed thousands of failure modes across 240+ client facilities by analyzing data from our TracRat equipment management software. When it comes to …
June 11, 2025
If you’ve ever had a motor go down unexpectedly, you know the impact can be immediate and expensive. Now, what if we told you most motor failures are preventable? At HECO, we’ve analyzed three years of electric motor failure data across 240 clients in steel, paper, chemical, power, mining, plastics, and other industrial sectors. The …
February 12, 2025
Are you sending the electric motors and equipment that serve as your operational lifeblood out to a repair shop you haven’t evaluated? The urge to get things off our desks and off our plates can lead to short-sighted decision making. It’s easy to send equipment out to the vendor who delivers weekly donuts, but it …
July 24, 2024
You are the maintenance manager for an industrial facility. Keeping the plant running and making sure there are adequate spares on hand for critical equipment is your job. If your cell phone rang at 1 a.m. with a call from the plant letting you know an important piece of equipment is down, would you be …
April 24, 2024
While HECO’s 2024 RPM Symposium will be held this fall on Oct. 1-2 in Kalamazoo, there’s still a lot to learn from our 2023 event – including Bob Bolhuis’ breakout session, “The Six Elements of a Successful Equipment Management Program.” About Our Speaker & RPM A HECO employee since 1986, Bolhuis is HECO’s Manager of Business …
March 13, 2024
Regardless of your specific operation, there are numerous systems in place to keep your facility running smoothly and efficiently. At HECO, we strongly urge placing an active Equipment Management System (EMS) at the top of your list of priorities. A good Equipment Management System is not a passive program. It should include a proactive approach …
July 26, 2023
Building upon the “Are You and Your Assets Prepared” information provided by HECO Director of Reliability and Senior Reliability Engineer for HECO’s Predictive Service Group Jason Spettel’s insights in this first part of this series, we now turn to insights from HECO’s Vice President and CEO-Emeritus Mark Hatfield. In a perfect world, every electric motor …
June 28, 2023
Are you the kind of person that checks your vehicle’s oil level and quality between oil changes or do you just trust that the automotive manufacturer knows when your oil goes from “good” to “get an oil change now!” status? At HECO, we’re both hyper-aware of the manufacturer specifications and proactive about minding our machines …
May 10, 2023
When it comes to motors and equipment, a holistic approach requires viewing various segments as a whole rather than a collection of parts. For the purpose of this blog series, we’ll take that notion a step further to look at how issues within a given system are both predicted and responded to. At HECO, we …
November 11, 2021
It’s the middle of the night and a key motor in your facility broke down. Every hour of delay is costing thousands of dollars. You pull a drop-in spare from on-site storage and it doesn’t work. It was ice cold when you pulled it out, the bearings are making odd noises, and it looks like …
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