Why Should Food Processing Opt For Industry 4.0 Maintenance?
Equipment maintenance at food processing facilities differs a lot from maintenance at other manufacturing plants. Health, safety and strict compliance with standards and regulations are of critical importance. There are specific items that should be carefully considered during maintenance performance in order to avoid contamination of the food being manufactured. Compared to other industries, maintenance personnel should show here as well a very high level of diligence in the workplace. A computerized maintenance management system, deployed at a food and beverage manufacturing plant should adhere to strict standards. A CMMS is expected to ensure high uptime rates by ensuring preventive maintenance schedules are followed while controlling maintenance costs.
But if the industry really dares to go further and maximize the life of assets, then it is time to consider the adoption of next-gen solutions and condition-based monitoring practices. Compared to other industrial sectors, the food processing one is still miles away from harvesting the undoubted advantages of industry 4.0 and predictive maintenance routines.
Top Issues in Food and Beverage Processing Plant Maintenance
The biggest challenges of maintenance professionals employed at food processing plants are the stringent government regulations and the complex equipment that can be quite difficult to maintain. Food and beverage manufacturing machines are specific type of equipment with many conveyors, belts and fasteners, requiring specific maintenance routines. The regulations are related to food safety which requires high cleanliness of the surfaces which on the other hand leads to wet environment damaging processing machines. Moreover, the jet sprayers used to blast the chemicals can be dangerous for the employees and equipment if the operators aren’t careful. Washdown equipment can also strip away machine coatings, leading to rust on the equipment which is absolutely forbidden at a food processing plant and can make the factory stop production. In general, a piece of equipment that is subjected to moisture and chemicals is much more likely to fail and should be given priority when establishing plant’s maintenance strategy.
Only well-maintained equipment wouldn’t break down during manufacturing and processing and can guarantee that the food or beverage production is completely safe and hygienic. Due to this reason, deploying a modern, next-gen CMMS and following preventive and predictive maintenance practices are of critical importance.
Easily Overcome All Maintenance Obstacles
First of all, a CMMS (computerized maintenance management system) tracks many essential aspects of your process as inventory control and inspections and can record equipment condition, repair history, warranties, spare parts lists and much more. Mobility Work is accessible anytime and anywhere from any smart device. The mobile version keeps you in-touch with the rest of the team while on the field and eases your data entry from any place in the world. Mobility Work offers its customers as well to geolocate equipment and spare parts while streamlining, centralizing and managing tracking to optimize maintenance performance. It is extremely easy to use and is usually immediately adopted by the team. There is no need for further training or support.
Mobility Work’s user-friendly mobile app supports your technicians in their daily maintenance routines.
Along from its conventional features, Mobility Work offers its customers the unique opportunity to become members of the 1st social maintenance network and discuss important topics with food and beverage maintenance professionals from all over the world. As the 1st maintenance management platform, Mobility Work gathers maintenance technicians, service providers and machine and consumable manufacturers at one place. As a registered user you would access the biggest network of industrial maintenance professionals, allowing you to find what or who you need instantly.
And this is not all: for factory owners who would like to open their plants to IoT and smart manufacturing, Mobility Work can be easily connected to ERPs and sensors. Condition-monitoring data is collected, stored and analyzed and can be used as the solid basis of powerful predictive algorithms.
Benefit of a CMMS for the food and beverage manufacturing plant :
Improve Visibility of Important Documents
All critical documentation related to the food industry regulations can be uploaded, attached to the related piece of equipment and seen by all involved departments from maintenance trough production and quality, to finance and purchasing.
Introduce Lean Maintenance Practices
Mobility Work is inspired by industry 4.0 and smart maintenance. The solution can easily become a part of your kaizen strategy or influence the creation of one.
Maximize Employees’ Schedules
By streamlining and automating your maintenance process, Mobility Work helps you to efficiently plan and schedule work orders by tracking technicians’ work and labor hours.
All news related to ongoing, late and scheduled intervention, as well as maintenance plans, are available in Mobility Work’s calendar feature.
Mobility Work is a flexible solution that can easily adapt to the specific maintenance requirements of any industrial sector.
The solution can drastically simplify the maintenance of the complex food processing machinery by managing and scheduling preventive and predictive interventions and controlling spare parts inventory. The equipment that is subject to humidity can be closely tracked with sensors and the data can be directly sent to the CMMS. If it shows critical values, the CMMS can directly issue e-mail alerts and assign a highly important task to the right professional. Otherwise the data can be collected and analyzed to predict the behavior of the machine.
Discover More Mobility Work Features
Get to Know the Real Value of Preventive Maintenance
Preventive maintenance is of highly importance for the operational efficiency of the equipment tracking and adjusting lubrication, calibration and cleanliness. A well-maintained machine will ensure the quality, consistency and safety of the produced food.
Learn more about how to establish a reliable and successful preventive maintenance routine with Mobility Work.
Invest in Condition-Monitoring Equipment for Smart Maintenance
Condition-monitoring tools as vibration sensors and oil analyses, ultrasound and infrared thermography have made it easier to measure asset’s health giving an insight into the probability of failure during any given period. But although the cost of sensors is declining the final price for the establishment of an entire predictive maintenance program may significantly exceed the budgets of smaller food and beverage manufacturers.
However, predictive maintenance is definitely worth it in a long term and is about to become the next most important competitive advantage.
Mobility Work is a next-gen CMMS and the 1st maintenance management platform. The solution has been successfully implemented by many important key players in a variety of industries. Mobility Work is easy to learn, intuitive to use and can be rapidly adapted to small,medium or large enterprise level food and beverage companies. The CMMS provides responsive and efficient maintenance management helping a plant to comply with all industry-relevant standards and regulations.
