July 03, 2008
Maintenance Tip
Do not underestimate the importance of your experienced maintenance mechanics and technicians.
Working in a relatively small animal feed processing plant, it is very difficult to convince top management to invest heavily in predictive maintenance equipment. So what I do is to work closely with my mechanics who have been with the company for years. They are useful in assisting to schedule planned maintenance, simply because they are able to sense that a piece of equipment is not operating at full capacity.
To give an example a mechanic was able to tell me that we need to plan to change the screens on and clean our pellet shaker by his noticing a change in the vibration frequency of the shaker. We were also able to schedule bucket changes on our pellet bucket elevators by listening to hear if they are sounds like the feed is falling from the top of the elevator to the bottom.
Reader tip provided by David Bridge
Plant Engineer
Jamaica Livestock Association - Feed Mills
Kingston Jamaica
Thanks David - your stainless steel diamond plate Reliabilityweb.com coffee mug is on the way.
