SPEED, QUALITY AND EXPERTISE - GETTING THE BEST REPAIR MIX

With the manufacturing industry working to increasingly tight margins and needing to get the maximum out of equipment, speed of service and quality of the repair work undertaken are fundamentally important for the maintenance of productivity and overall profitability.

"At Dowding & Mills Engineering Services, we have many years experience in providing repair and maintenance services," says David Whitaker, branch manager at Dowding & Mills in Scarborough. "A fast turnaround is essential for a machine or component which, when off line, stops production. Even in these cases, customers should still expect to be offered various options: typically the 'best' solution; the quickest repair; and the most cost-effective way of overcoming the problem, to ensure the repair fits their immediate and long term needs."

To minimise costly downtime and disruption to production, sites should expect a 'round the clock' service from the mechanical repair and maintenance industry. In particular with more complex repairs, the repairer must be flexible when evaluating where and how to carry out a repair.

For example Dowding & Mills recently handled two very similar jobs, both time critical, but with differing complications. The first job involved machining a large main shaft for mixer vessel manufacturer, Plenty Mixers. The shaft measured nearly eight metres in length and weighed over three tonnes, a fairly straightforward job, except that the shaft was fabricated from titanium and was worth in the region of œ0.5m. The other, for Bovingdon Brickworks, followed the breakdown of a shaft, and involved setting up and machining journals and a keyway of an unusual square steel shaft, using the boundary dimensions of the broken, old worn shaft. This time the job was made more complicated because the piece of steel to be machined was in a poor condition

"The expensive titanium shaft was made by specialist fabricators and came to us for urgent machining," added David Whitaker. "Titanium is a very difficult material to work with - not least because even the slightest error could be extremely costly. We needed to alter our settings to meet the precise requirements of Plenty Mixers, but I am pleased to say we completed the task on time and with no mistakes."

Both of these jobs involved engineers working to very tight deadlines, the first to ensure that the end user in Pakistan received the mixer vessel on time and the second to minimise downtime for the customer.

The speed of repair and responsiveness of Dowding & Mills really impressed Bovingdon Brickworks' plant manager, Dick Hawkes, who commented: "When I looked at the job times I was amazed. The shaft was collected late on the Monday and delivered back early on the Wednesday afternoon. Furthermore, considering that the pattern was exceedingly worn and the material supplied extremely rusty, the finished job was absolutely perfect."

A comprehensive service can only be achieved with comprehensive facilities. Companies can really benefit from ensuring their contractors have conveniently located branches to minimise travel time. They should also expect repairers to have suitable in-house equipment to enable work to be done out of hours, all of which adds to the quality and reliability of the overall service.

In order to improve access to its range of services, Dowding & Mills has merged its electrical and mechanical divisions in the UK, creating a single Engineering Services business. The new merged branches provide customers with a single, local point of contact for all their repair requirements. In addition, because it has a network of branches located throughout the UK, Dowding & Mills is able to respond very quickly - for example when the shaft broke at Bovingdon Brickworks the company contacted its nearest Dowding & Mills branch, in Hemel Hempstead. The Hemel branch collected both the worn and the replacement shaft and passed them onto the Weedon branch for specialist machining. The specification and workscope was immediately defined and the replacement shaft machined to the customers' requirements, prior to being returned to the Hemel branch for re-installation at Bovingdon Brickworks.

Dowding & Mills - Engineering, Calibration & Electronics Services

However, there is something that beats knowing how and where to get expert maintenance. "The best form of repair, of course, is to prevent the problem from occurring in the first place," explains David Whitaker. "Using condition monitoring equipment and surface engineering technology can help increase the life of equipment, sometimes even beyond the original expectation. Any business operating with expensive or critical plant should be aware of this. Where repairs are concerned, customers should look to incorporate modifications, where possible, to improve the design of equipment and prevent reoccurrence of the problem."