In our newsletter today we’ve got another look at the topic of maintenance but this time from the perspective of strategies that can be employed to ensure machine uptime. These include setting and understanding performance metrics so it is easier to determine when issues may be occurring, use of predictive maintenance tools as well as prioritizing reliability when designing and choosing components.

Machine uptime is critical to operations of all types to ensure they remain productive. Downtime, especially if unplanned, can be costly and prohibit an operation’s ability to get done the work it needs to. The National Fluid Power Association’s latest Technology Roadmap notes increased availability and uptime as a key customer driver for many machine builders, and as such reliability and durability were among the capability improvement areas pointed to in the roadmap that the fluid power industry should consider focusing its development efforts on.  

How can reliability and durability be improved in fluid power and other motion control technologies? What methods are you seeing employed to improve component and system reliability or machine uptime? Have further questions about these topics you want us to cover in the future? Let me know by reaching out to me at [email protected] or take our quick poll to offer suggestions on these or other topics you’d like to see covered in the coming year.

Sara Jensen, Editor, Power & Motion