5 Conveyor System Maintenance Tips

1. Regularly inspect your equipment

Equipment can become damaged beyond repair without regular inspections.

Repairing poorly maintained conveyors can cost a lot more than regular maintenance, and also leads to longer conveyor system downtime.

It is important to follow the maintenance schedule for all equipment.

Proper conveyor system maintenance allows your business to avoid many costly problems.

Even small issues can turn into big problems, so preventative care is very important in saving time, money, and hassle down the line.

2. Have conveyor system maintenance technicians readily available

It is important to have a qualified maintenance technician who can carry out the maintenance for your machines. A good technician will be able to catch and correct small problems before they snowball into really big problems. However, for basic conveyor maintenance, it could be useful to train your employees to fix common issues.

Make sure that you know who to call should a problem arise, and always keep to the suggested service schedule as mentioned above to ensure your machines continue to run smoothly.

3. Have a stock of spare parts

Having a stock of spare parts is a really good idea.

Having processes halted over a simple broken part is a frustrating and completely avoidable issue. It may be a simple case of going to the nearest supplier and picking up the necessary part. This could take a few minutes, to a few hours.

However in the worst case you would have to wait for a backordered part to be dispatched, this could potentially take days, or even weeks!

Do not risk having your equipment on a standstill over a minor problem. Your conveyor supplier or conveyor system maintenance technician should be able to advise you on what parts are likely to be needed.

Often with older conveyor systems, some of the parts become discontinued, so it’s important to know if your parts will be readily available or whether you should stock up before the parts become obsolete.

4. Mistakes happen, so learn from them

Sometimes machines break unexpectedly, however in some cases they break through misuse.

Whatever the issue is, or however the issue arose, it should be logged. This allows for conveyor system maintenance technicians to understand the general usage and also if there are any warning signs preceding a breakdown.

For example an employee might notice the conveyor sounded strange shortly before it malfunctioned.

If this is logged it can serve as a warning to other employees, and can assist technicians in quickly diagnosing the problem.

When introducing new employees to the equipment and working environment, notify them of prior mistakes.

It could potentially save a lot of time and headaches by being upfront about what could go wrong, what has gone wrong, and how it was resolved previously.

5. Keep your employees informed

An employee only knows as much as they’re taught or what they’ve experienced.

If they are not shown best practices when using a conveyor system then they will not follow them.

Make sure your employees know how to work with the conveyor system effectively.

There are many easily avoidable mistakes that can be costly in a fast moving production environment. Perhaps allow experienced staff to train new employees for a period of time to ensure the correct procedures are applied.