The pace of change in industrial environments, driven by Industry 4.0 and the Internet of Things, creates a challenge for modern maintenance engineers. At RS, we understand those challenges.

We partner with you to help integrate new products, services and technologies to support planned, preventative and reactive maintenance demands, as well as procurement needs. We want to showcase and highlight more productive ways of working within a maintenance environment across a range of industries by giving you all latest technologies; delivered when you need them.

Making Maintenance Matter

Maintenance in its various forms is an unavoidable certainty whatever your business. Here we consider examples of best practice from different industries and where new technology and a different approach can reduce reactive maintenance and increase productivity.

Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)

While not a new idea, the concept of getting operators involved in maintaining their own equipment, and emphasising proactive & preventive maintenance lays the foundation for improved productivity - fewer breakdowns, stops, and defects. The barrier has often been the cost and implementation of in-process instrumentation that indicates to an operative when a machine or process performance is changing and maintenance is required. SMC is one of many manufacturers now creating simple to use, cost effective devices such as digital process indicators which can be easily added to machinery to show performance changes. Monitoring variables such as pressure, temperature and current, then making these visible to an operator combined with some training on routine maintenance; such as cleaning, lubricating, and inspection can significant reduce unforeseen stoppages. It also has the additional benefits of giving operators greater “ownership” and knowledge of their equipment and frees maintenance personnel for higher-level tasks.

Focus on the Future of Maintenance

What does the future of maintenance engineering look like? Explore what some of our leading suppliers are doing to be at the forefront of modern maintenance. As well as that, learn about the journey from when industries were purely powered by machines, through to the technology revolution which changed everything to become powered by computers.

Open IoT ready data gateway

The Internet of Things is becoming an integral part of maintenance engineering. We’re working with Siemens to support modern factories and the need for easy maintenance, fast development and precise industrialised functionality. Check out some of the benefits the Siemens IOT2020 system offers to maintenance engineers.

Monitoring the factory floor

Brainboxes are connectivity and data conversion experts. Their team highly experienced software and hardware engineers create solutions that allow legacy data and protocols to be converted or transferred to USB and Ethernet.

Working with the RS Components operations team Brainboxes created a unique solution which provides live productivity and performance information. Watch our video to find out more and gain an insight into the modern challenges of maintenance and the benefits Industry 4.0.

Focus on Planned Maintenance

We know that different-sized companies have different planned maintenance strategies to suit them. That’s why we have an extensive range of products to assist you with your maintenance needs, no matter what environment you’re operating in.

Why is Planned Maintenance so important?

Maintenance is a key part of any business, no matter how big or small. In this modern, competitive world it’s more vital than ever to maximise the useful lifetime of any given asset to ensure that cost is kept to a minimum. In short, effective maintenance has the ability to increase profit and reduce downtime.

Focus on Preventative Maintenance

Help to reduce equipment failure with spotlight connected products, which can provide additional information about their status or the process they are in. Browse some of the key products here.

Predictive Maintenance within production line

As with any production line, it’s essential that the equipment is maintained, to avoid failure and costly downtime.Predictive maintenance can help avoid a number of issues, by putting in place a planned schedule that periodically or continuously checks the equipment.

Focus on Procurement Solutions

Unplanned maintenance and the resulting production downtime is the bane of most organisations. But such costs and inefficiency may soon be a thing of the past, as experts believe that new technology will drive a shift away from reactive maintenance towards predictive, smart maintenance.

This article covers the procurement focus on MRO and how organisations can reduce downtime, cut costs and increase productivity by adopting smart maintenance.

Why it’s time to rethink your approach to Maintenance

Unplanned maintenance and the resulting production downtime is the bane of most organisations. Deloitte reports that such downtime costs industrial manufacturers £37 billion [$50 billion], and that 42% of downtime is caused by equipment failure. Such costs and inefficiency may soon be a thing of the past, however, as experts believe that new technology will drive a shift away from reactive maintenance towards predictive, smart maintenance. The combination of connected technology (the Industrial Internet of Things) becoming available at lower costs and greater data analytics makes it possible to monitor almost any machine and predict failure before it happens. This makes it possible for organisations to identify problems and plan downtime to suit their own schedule.