Service Departments and Scheduled Maintenance
Service after the sale is a value added product. Often times we look at a service business as someone trying to get extra money out of our purchase. Well, here is some food for thought:
When you do not regularly maintain your equipment, it tends to break easily or not work as efficiently. When this happens, you have downtime that you did not foresee. This is the worst type of down time, because it will cost you substantially more than scheduled down time.
Scheduled down time? How could scheduling down time help? Isn’t it still unproductive down time? The answer is NO. When you break down unexpectedly, you could have a huge mess on your hands and unproductive employees. You also may not have the parts to fix the problem right away, leading to longer downtime, loss of production, rushed freight charges, etc…
By scheduling your downtime, it becomes an expense, which you factor into product pricing, just like you do for operating expenses.
For example:
- I know it costs me $3,000 per day to have my plant out of production regardless of why.
- If I choose not to schedule my down time, then it will cost $3,000 per day that is not planned into the budget. I also probably do not have the spare parts that I need, therefore I now will have to wait on the parts. Depending on where I am located, this could take up to 10 days.
- Now, I have had a breakdown that could cost me $30,000 just in down time (this does not include rushed freight) and may have been prevented if I had scheduled downtime to do proper maintenance and kept a supply of parts in inventory for maintenance and/or emergencies.
You will not find every problem with scheduled maintenance but you will always find something that could save you time and money down the road.
Purchasing a quality scheduled service program is not always a waste of money. In the example above, if I had purchased a scheduled service program from my equipment supplier, I could have saved $30,000 in downtime. A quality service program could have paid for itself and still saved me a substantial amount of money.
I suggest doing your homework and asking your equipment supplier what kind of service programs that they offer to help manage your downtime and start saving you some serious cash.
Insta-Pro International has an active service department with over 150 years of combined experience. We have regional technicians to attend to the many different corners of the world. Give Ray Goodwin or Jim Little a call or send them an email to find out how we may be able to help you!
Ray Goodwin: rgoodwin@insta-pro.com or +515-205-4719.
Jim Little: jlittle@insta-pro.com or +515-254-1260.
