Equipment and machinery play a crucial role in most companies. Their role plays out well in bringing about efficiency and productivity—the two aspects businesses aim to achieve since these directly impact the bottom line, making profits.
Without equipment, workers will execute work manually. Although this has worked previously, it has brought about several disadvantages like errors in work execution and slow work execution. Errors lead to reworks to ensure you get production right. This process consumes a lot of time, limiting the work done in a day. Less work translates to fewer returns and lower profits, making the manual execution of work undesirable.
However, the reverse happens once you adopt lifting equipment. Machines work faster and more precisely, eliminating the need for reworks. Therefore, more work is done daily, increasing productivity, returns, and profits.
It’s good to point out that the only way lifting equipment will meet your needs efficiently is if they’re in good condition. Your equipment will only be in good condition if you maintain them properly. If you fail to do so, you might experience equipment failure, which is undesirable. Failed equipment will lead to work stoppage until you repair the tool, leading to inefficiencies. How can you ensure your lifting equipment never fails as a business owner? This article highlights tips you can adopt; read on for this insight.
Conduct Inspections
Inspections form an integral part of ensuring your lifting equipment doesn’t fail. An inspection will prevent situations where your tool fails to function midway through an operation, which can become a safety hazard, besides hindering productivity. Therefore, it’d help to inspect your equipment before use. Consider creating a simple checklist to use for the inspection. It doesn’t have to be as detailed as your regular maintenance. The inspection checklist should contain the parts the equipment depends on for it to function. It should contain parts such as the shackle, wheels, engine, steering wheel, and brakes.
After the inspection, consider operating the lifting equipment without any load to ensure all parts are moving as they should. If they don’t, address the issues accordingly before loading the equipment.
Besides inspecting your equipment before use, it’s advisable to schedule regular inspections with experts in the industry. Providers like Stenhouse Lifting and others offer on-site inspections and will identify issues you might be missing during your in-house inspections and maintenance activities. This puts your operations in a better place safety-wise.
Practice Regular Maintenance
Maintenance adopts a preventive approach to prevent equipment failure. It entails ensuring that all the equipment parts are in good condition and functioning as they should. For this process to be effective, you must adopt a few practices.
One, create a maintenance schedule that details when maintenance will happen, including the date, time, and personnel. It’s advisable to do the scheduling after working hours. You don’t want to interrupt your daily operations as it’ll affect productivity. Also, ensure you allocate the maintenance to a specific team or personnel. Remember, too many cooks spoil the broth; it’ll allow for accountability in the event of issues.
Two, be sure to keep a record of all maintenance activities. The record should include the parts inspected, replaced, or repaired. Such details enable you to make decisions like when to replace parts. It’d also help to create a maintenance checklist to guide the maintenance team on taking care of the tool. This way, there’ll be no room for errors.
Use The Equipment For The Right Job
Lifting equipment varies in terms of sizes and designs, and each tool is designed to execute a given task. Using a tool for the wrong purpose could lead to equipment failure. Therefore, refrain from doing this.
A simple way to prevent equipment misuse is by reading the tool’s manual. Manufacturers will depict the workings of the tool in the manual. With this information, you and your workers will know what tool to use for a given task.
The other way to prevent equipment failure is by checking the load capacity of your tool. This capacity depicts the maximum load the equipment should lift. Therefore, before lifting, measure your load’s weight and compare it to the tool’s load capacity. In no case should you load items whose weight is more than or equal to the equipment’s load capacity. If you do, expect your equipment to fail—parts might snap, or the moving parts fail to move, rendering your operations stagnant.
Conclusion
Most lifting equipment are big investment to businesses since they don’t come cheap. You can only get a return on your investment if the tool serves you for a long time. Most tools are manufactured to offer long-term service. However, due to mishandling, their lifespan reduces and they bring about inefficiencies. The discussion above highlights various ways to prevent equipment mishandling. Be sure to put the insight given herein into practice, and you won’t have to worry about your lifting equipment failing.
