By Nontu Mkhize, Offer Marketing Manager at Schneider Electric

Facilities often neglect services and after-sales support until they face operational issues, highlighting the need to shift focus to proactive consulting and maintenance contracts.

It is therefore vital for businesses to consider implementing preventative measures to avoid costly downtime and production disruptions. These measures collectively protect investments and ensure uninterrupted operations.

Unfortunately, for many businesses, maintenance services and aftersales support remain a grudge purchase, with organisations often simply thinking that they can save money and hope that nothing goes wrong – until they face operational issues. In many cases, companies learn the hard way that downtime is usually much more costly than paying for a service plan.

Conditions of installation of equipment play a crucial role in the lifespan of equipment. This is irrespective of brand, but rather the environmental factors and application that affect the electronic components and other wear/tear components. Yet, service plans can be key to avoiding downtime and ensuring uninterrupted operations, which saves money in the long run.

Adverse impact on bottom line

Unplanned downtime with no service plans in place can ultimately affect revenue, increase operational costs, and adversely impact an organisation’s bottom line. It is never a good idea to ignore these measures.

On the other hand, proactive maintenance contracts play a vital role in pre-empting costly downtime and production for industrial businesses. Proactive maintenance reduces the risk of equipment failure while improving solution performance and reliability. Essentially, by taking a proactive approach to maintenance, companies can prevent operational problems before they even appear, ensuring the efficiency and sustainability of the business.

A consultative partner who can audit, evaluate and map electrical and automation assets and systems can assist industrial companies gain knowledge and awareness of what is happening inside their plants before operational issues crop up. By conducting assessments such as power policy audits and power systems, valuable data can be collected and studied by the consultative partner who will then provide recommendations and solutions for aspects such as industrial automation or power quality. This proactive guidance enhances asset reliability and optimisation.

Ageing infrastructure challenges

The proactive approach also provides key benefits for companies that need to address ageing infrastructure challenges, with the consultative partner advising the business on how best to spend its maintenance budget, while also drawing a maintenance plan for several years in advance. This allows organisations to budget properly for the maintenance or ageing infrastructure and to draw up a contingency budget should the worst-case scenario transpire.

A consultative partner can also contribute to increasing safety and reliability in mission-critical infrastructure, with data accessibility playing a key role in reducing maintenance costs and maximising system uptime. By collecting and analysing historical and real-time data, businesses can ensure that their operations become safer and more reliable based on the equipment and processes they are running, ensuring that these are compliant with safety standards and industry regulations.

Planning is critical to the operational side of an organisation, and it is crucial that companies start paying more attention to it. By focusing on proactive consulting, maintenance contracts, and industrial businesses can ultimately maximise asset investment, extend equipment life and avoid costly downtime.