Most of the focus of plant/mill management is understandable on the “Manufacturing” processes. Attentions are on improving productivity and equipment reliability. That makes perfect sense, production equipment is the heart of the machine that is the plant or mill. The facility or physical plant is there to protect the processes and tie them all together with a physical structure designed specifically to house and protect the manufacturing and supporting operations.
The plant or mill infrastructure is almost always an afterthought. Permanent repairs to it are put off or substituted with temporary fixes just to get to the next outage only to be put off again due to some unexpected failure or priority that arises.
Many of these situations will become chronic and could put a strain on normal operations or cause them to be adjusted to less than optimal levels. Left unresolved, these problems could lead to critical failures, safety issues or issues with local and state regulations.
Some of the issue is the perception that to make the repairs the plant will have to severely curtail or stop operations in order to fix the problem. There may be some confusion as to if the repairs are even possible or what they cost.
There are many solutions to most of the common plant infrastructure repairs. It’s just a matter of matching the right one with your expectations. Give us a call to talk about the plant infrastructure projects you’ve been putting off or plan to tackle.
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