Activate Your Meters

My first encounter with a meter was when I was a youngster. My mum had called for a taxi as we were going out to visit friends. When the taxi arrived, my mum asked the taxi driver to wait for a few minutes as she had forgotten something in the house.

The taxi driver’s simple response was.

 ’The Meter is Running….         

In today’s world meters are prevalent in just about every environment and activity.

In the world of the maintenance engineer and technician, there are meters installed just about around every corner. If you’re looking to refine your planned maintenance strategy, adopting a meter-based approach is worth considering. Meters are there for a specific purpose, as they keep track of usage variables providing you with the best maintenance insights for your equipment.

The reality however for a lot of meters is that sadly the only service they provide is to gather a lot of dust.

If you are passionate about increasing productivity and extending the longevity of expensive equipment, then ignore meters at your peril. You need to get rid of the dust and activate the use of your meters. To achieve success, machinery needs to be regularly serviced and maintained in accordance with manufacturers’ instructions. This can be achieved for a lot of machines simply on a time basis. (Weekly, Monthly, Yearly etc).

However, there are some machines where service intervals become due based on how many units have been used. A simple example may be, where servicing is scheduled based on the number of kilometres driven, the number of hours the equipment has been in use, the number of parts that have been produced, or an operating condition such as pressure, temperature or flow rate.

So how do we ensure that meter-based equipment is looked after correctly? This can only be done by capturing the actual meter reading on a regular basis, either manually or digitally, subject to the technology available to you.

The simple process is to create a Planned Maintenance Task on your management system with the activity being to take readings from meter-based machines on a regular time base. The time base would need to be determined subject to the type of machine and frequencies of service intervals. The task would be automatically generated by your management system at the correct time and would instruct the technician to capture the appropriate reading. The reading would then be updated onto your management system which would then check the updated reading with the service interval. If the system detects that the reading threshold has been reached and a service task is due, the system will then create the appropriate planned maintenance service task for activation.

The process is relatively simple and straightforward but if not activated, you will run the risk of production volumes diminishing and machine life spans being decreased.

Meters are there for a reason and can be a hugely valuable resource for any proactive maintenance specialist.

Remember – ‘The meter is running’ and the resultant cost will be your responsibility.

Contact Joe  Schoeman and the Schorp  Group  Team for more information.