A bottle line has an 8-station valve manifold running the cylinders on the reject and diverter section: two reject pushers, a lane diverter, a bottle stop, and a few clamps. An issue came up on second shift because the operator reported that the line was intermittently rejecting the bottle after a "low fill" and it's doing it on both rejectors. The tech noticed a constant hiss from the manifold and couldn't localize the leak. The tech did the following tests: Soap-tests ever

When you're processing work orders, a substantial quantity of time can be wasted in trying to figure out which one to work on. This requires reading large quantities of work to find the most important, or to find one that a specific person can do. With good coding practices at the work order approval/induction point, you can dramatically reduce lost time by all of the work order stations. This article is for maintenance managers and people who use work order systems. Most

First time it happened, no big deal. We just power cycled the machine and it went away. One drive in a bank of them dropped out mid-shift: the fault said something about "F111 Safety Hardware". Machine just shut down and wouldn't run. No E-stop pressed. No gate opened. Safety relay had all green lights, no issue there. After power cycling, the machine fired up and ran the rest of the shift with zero complaints. Then nothing for three weeks. Then it came back. Once a week

A tripped thermal overload is one of those events that is an opportunity to avoid unnecessary downtime and repeat calls that not every shop understands. Some techs reset overloads over and over until something breaks. Wiser techs just take a couple extra minutes to find the problem and they touch it once. The difference is sequence and understanding. Here's an approach that starts where you already are and rules out causes efficiently. What could have caused it? Before you do

In the world of asset management, deferred maintenance seems like a quick win, a way to cut costs today and free up budget for other priorities. Maintenance costs are deferred for several reasons. It could be because the organization cannot find the time for shutdown, doesn't plan well enough to get the work done, or just won't spend the money. But here's the harsh reality, what looks like savings upfront inevitably spirals into massive financial losses down the line. It's a