If It's Not Broken...: How to
Reduce Maintenance Costs to
Increase Your Bottom Line
Maintenance is often considered one of the most unglamorous aspects of a business, but in reality, it’s one of the most important of them all. If your company has been operating for a while now, you know the vital role maintenance plays in its daily processes. For example, a hotel simply couldn’t host guests in rooms with broken heaters or A/C units, just as a construction crew wouldn’t be able to work on the project at hand if the heavy equipment required to complete the day’s work wasn’t running properly.
Essentially, maintenance is a required cost in many organizations should they want to operate well and stay in business. However, many of these companies are also spending far more than they should on maintenance and repair costs each year. This happens for a variety of reasons, including neglected assets which break down or incorrect/outdated maintenance records, both of which affect a company’s overall productivity and total revenue.
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Even over-servicing of assets, equipment, and inventory can unnecessarily increase costs related to maintenance. For example, a study of production and manufacturing plants by Emerson Process Management found over half of typical maintenance activities are unnecessary. In general, Emerson found 63% of work orders never resulted in corrective actions because there was nothing wrong with the specified equipment in the first place, and only 31% of 230 valves scheduled for rebuilding actually needed the work performed.
Maintenance can also cost companies more than is necessary when subsequent repercussions come into play. As noted above, neglected assets often require immediate attention when they fail to work, which decreases productivity not just within the company’s maintenance department, but also across the entire organization when others employees are relying on functioning assets to do their jobs. A company can lose hundreds to thousands of dollars a day in these situations, and also risk losing business opportunities and rapport with customers if they see the inefficiencies caused by lack of proper maintenance.
Several Asset Panda customers have used our software to improve their maintenance operations, one of them being AIRTEST Company, Inc. AIRTEST provides testing, adjusting, and balancing services for HVAC systems in professional and commercial buildings. Before implementing Asset Panda, AIRTEST didn’t even know the last maintenance records of their assets, but this all changed after trying our software:
Since migrating our asset tracking and management to Asset Panda, I feel like we cannot be without the product ever again! With Asset Panda we are able to dial in our equipment to who has what and where, calibration status, etc. When someone needs a particular instrument they can check the Asset Panda mobile app to see who has what they need, making our employees and the office as a whole more efficient. We now have an accurate inventory of who has what in real time, and there is no more hassle or struggle in trying to update spreadsheets.
Brent Wyman
Vice President & Operations Manager