Complex woodworking machines are similar to automobiles: unless properly maintained, they typically experience premature breakdown that leads to numerous repair bills and the frustration of stopping and starting production process while repairs are made. To prevent these setbacks, owners of woodworking machinery implement logged service scheduling—also known as logged service maintenance—on each of their machines. How frequently, and in what way, a machine should be maintained varies by machine. But all woodworking machines require three forms of maintenance: checking a machine for worn internal and external parts, replacing such parts as necessary; cleaning wood dust from a machine’s interior; and lubricating a machine’s internal and external parts.
How Does Logged Service Maintenance Differ from Traditional Maintenance?
The procedures performed during logged service maintenance may also be performed in maintenance processes that don’t “log” the service performed. However, keeping track of maintenance measures by logging them on an official form brings at least three advantages: assurance that maintenance has been performed; more responsibility for the maintenance person; and a definitive record of maintenance that can influence your machinery’s market value.
1. Assurance of Maintenance
Keeping a logged service record doesn’t mean that you distrust your employees. Rather, it provides the assurance that a machine is indeed being maintained, and is therefore less prone to breakdown or safety issues. In smaller woodworking operations, logging maintenance may not be necessary to ensure that a machine is being properly maintained. But in high production industrial operations that feature multiple machines, the maintenance on which could easily be overlooked or left incomplete due to other tasks, logged service is a necessity.
2. More Responsibility for the Maintenance Person
When a worker learns the proper maintenance procedures for a machine, he or she usually fulfills them without fault. But there are also cases where workers choose to be lazy and not service a machine, yet still sign its logged service record as if they did. When machines consistently experience problems that repair experts identify as resulting from a lack of proper maintenance, the responsible employee(s) can be officially warned or released from employment. In most cases, the presence of a logged service record prevents such behavior.
Definitive Record of Maintenance
In addition to ensuring that machines have been serviced and serviced properly, keeping official service records will make your machinery more valuable if you decide to sell it. Due to the high cost of buying industrial machinery new, the market for used industrial woodworking machinery remains strong, and professional resellers of machinery will be likelier to offer a competitive price for your machines if they have service records that predict their safe and dependable use for years to come.
Whether you need to buy industrial woodworking machines used, sell them, or insure that your machines are properly serviced, nothing suffices for implementing an official logged service records. In addition to ensuring that your machines remain in good condition and enjoy high resale value, service records can help to prevent safety issues that result from lack of maintenance, which could result in lawsuits against the company that uses the machines.
