Whether they manufacture food, medicine or heavy machinery, maintenance incidents are something all industries have in common, and something they all want to avoid or at least minimise. When a failure happens outside of the scheduled maintenance window, disrupting production, not only is it inconvenient, it can result in financial loss. Sometimes the financial loss is in damages caused by the failure, and sometimes in the loss of productive time, both of which can accumulate into a major financial impact.
As an example, a major Asian tire manufacturer used to experience 284 counts of maintenance incidents annually, each causing an average of 2 hours in downtime. It results in $500,000 USD in production losses each year. The cause behind the failure was, what most might call – trivial: Nuts close to the tire moulding press coming loose. The thermal expansion of the material during machine’s operation, would eventually cause the nuts to loosen. Initially, the maintenance team just kept re-torqueing them to correct clamp load but naturally, since they were not secured with anything at all, the incidents just kept occurring.
The solution was as simple: A few drops of medium strength threadlocker LOCTITE 243 on each fastener before torqueing it onto the bolt. There were no more incidents, and 568 hours of downtime became 568 hours of extra production. This simple change resulted in half a million dollars worth of extra output.
Ever wondered what our liquid threadlockers can do for your production? To learn more about the role that our innovative liquid threadlockers play in proactive maintenance, contact one of our technical specialists today!
