Scheduling Routine Machine Maintenence

Ideas that can help you stay on top of regular shop machine maintenance tasks. July 23, 2007

Question
Does anyone have a machine maintenance schedule sheet that they would be willing to share with me? I am trying to put a regular maintenance schedule into effect, and would like to hear how other shops are keeping an accurate record of individual machine maintenance.

Forum Responses
(Business and Management Forum)
From contributor B:
Just a couple months ago I finally instituted a machine maintenance schedule in the shop. We call it "maintenance Monday" and do, as the name suggests, maintenance on machines first thing every Monday morning.

This is a new program so I'm still working out a lot of the details. Basically, every Monday morning we spend about 1 hour when the guys first come in taking care of machines. We have 4 different machine lists, one for each Monday of the month (1st, 2nd etc.). Each machine in the shop is on one of those lists.

I am currently printing out a list of the machines to be serviced on a particular Monday, including a list of items to be cleaned, tightened, checked, changed... or whatever needs attention on each one. Eventually I plan to have a label at each machine spelling out the maintenance to be done, but for now, we're still discovering things that should be on particular machine lists, so I print it out every week.

This is good for the machines in general, but I've also discovered an unexpected side benefit. Since the guys are maintaining the machines on a regular basis (instead of calling me down when one breaks!), they are becoming more conscious of machine operation in general. It's my hope that because of this they'll become more aware of things that don't seem right before they break.



From contributor S:
One person should be in charge of maintenance because you will have new people come in who could hurt themselves or the machine if they mess with it. Record maintenance history in Excel, along with the maintenance schedule. Go machine by machine, checking with the manufacturer and/or the owner's manual for your initial schedule, then use your experience to modify it as time goes by. My maintenance guy also records time down and costs by machine and makes a graph of both at the end of the month, showing 6 month cost trends.


From contributor L:
We set up recurring tasks in Outlook. Each machine is listed as a contact, allowing us to keep notes, etc. The tasks, including specific instructions, can be printed out and taken to the machine for service. It works for us!