It’s 1 a.m. Do You Know Where Your Electric Motors Are? - HECO

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 able to direct the caller to urgently needed spares?

Sure, this sounds like the over-dramatic public service announcements warning of youth curfews, but the question remains: Where are your spares and could you locate them at a moment’s notice, half-asleep, and out of the blue?

HECO can help ensure your motor inventory is up to date and ready for use even when an unplanned repair and costly downtime strike in the wee hours of the morning.

What’s The Worst That Could Happen?

The short answer is further damage to equipment, prolonged downtime, or even termination.

As the maintenance manager, it is critical to plant production that you know where every spare piece of equipment is located and that every spare is ready to go into service at a moment’s notice. You should also know the specifications each piece of equipment was repaired to as well as when it was repaired and who completed the repair.

In the event of an emergency breakdown situation, you won’t have time to physically search for records and you certainly don’t want the embarrassment of not knowing where a spare might be, what rating it is once you find it, or if you even have a spare at all.

That said, it would be even worse to know where the equipment is, take the time to install, wire, and align the equipment only to find that it had not been stored properly and it will not run properly.

But wait, it could be even worse! For example, let’s say you stored a motor properly, spun its shaft every quarter, kept it clean and dry, and you even megged it semi-annually. Unfortunately, the shop that repaired it last time cut some corners and did not follow the specifications you provided. What should have been your go-to, backup motor is no longer a viable option to get you out of this emergency.

Preparedness & Partnership Matter

All of these scenarios can be solved by selecting a motor repair company with the resources to anticipate, manage, prepare for, and respond to these issues on your behalf.

To be most successful, you have to throw out the older vendor versus customer dynamic and work with a company that truly partners with you. A true partner will not only bring solutions to the potential problems mentioned above, they will also go above and beyond.

When a proper motor and equipment management program is put in place, software like HECO’s TracRat is used to track the location of every motor within your system. These records will include equipment that is in service, sitting in your warehouse or an external vendor’s warehouse for remote storage, those out for repair, and even equipment that is in the process of being built.

It’s also important to include specifications based on your industry as well as your specific needs in these documents.

When properly tracked by a trusted partner, that 1 a.m. call can be answered with a few keystrokes on the computer or a few swipes on your phone. You will know exactly where the necessary replacement equipment is and that they will be repaired to your specifications.

Those with prepared partners also won’t have to worry that they are running at risk and without a spare motor for a given application. Rather than merely calling attention to the issues, your partner will have noticed the issue long before that early morning call and delivered options and a solution to get your plant the coverage necessary in the event of a failure.

Beware of Imposters

Many vendors say they have an equipment management database or software. These imposters often use a spreadsheet and call it an equipment management program, but a real equipment management program provides clients with a web-based database that houses the history of each piece of equipment, its repairs, applications, and specifications.

Just like your medical record at your doctor’s office, the database should track every life-changing event related to a given piece of equipment, including:

• When was it purchased?
• Where did it go after purchase, to a shelf or directly into service?
• When was the shaft spun last?
• What were the electrical test results?
• How long was it on the shelf?
• What piece of equipment was it connected to?
• How long was it in service?
• What was the last failure mode?
• What did the repair shop do to repair it?
• Did the repair shop modify the equipment to extend its life?
• How long does it take to remove the old equipment and install the new one?

If your “partner” can’t provide these answers in a web-accessible format, it’s time to start looking for someone else to depend on during regular business hours and 1 a.m. emergency calls.

All Systems Go

HECO has over 35 years of experience maintaining and keeping track of motors and other equipment for our clients. We currently track over 50,000 motors and other equipment.

On top of that, our partners are confident that their spares are where we say they are with convenient, searchable records and photos housed in our TracRat Equipment Management System software.

We give you the confidence and security of knowing where all of your equipment is and that it is ready for use whenever needed.

You can trust us to put our decades of experience selling, servicing, monitoring, and storing electric motors and rotating equipment to work for you. Contact us to discuss what keeps you up at night.

Posted in Equipment Management