When an industrial electronic control, like a circuit board or a connector, breaks which may happen from time to time, it can result in significant downtime, especially if handled improperly. This can be an incredibly stressful event because downtime means your business is not being productive — which ultimately leads to a loss of revenue. Complete industrial control system breakdowns often result from small part malfunctions and the management of those malfunctions. However, there are things you can to to be proactive and prevent failures.
Here are some things you can do to better handle an outage and help minimize the negative effects of an industrial electronic component failure:
Have a Plan
Anticipating that your industrial electronic control components may fail can go a long way in making an outage a less stressful event. Although industrial electronic controls are designed to work flawlessly, the reality is, problems can and will happen, resulting in a complete system failure. Even if your company has been unscathed by a downed machine caused by a component failure, having a plan in place to prepare for an outage is important to get things back up and running as soon as possible.
Knowing who to call and how to handle the event is the first half of the battle. Having the contact information accessible for a professional industrial control repair service is important to get help on the way as soon as possible. Taking that one step further, having the hours of operation handy can also ease stress and speed up recovery. Additionally, communicating the outage to those who need to know, such as customers (if the outage would impact them) and employees, is important from a public relations standpoint.
Leave it to the Professionals
As we previously mentioned, knowing who to call is critical in getting your equipment back up and running. It is critical when selecting a company to fix your industrial circuit board or other industrial controls that they be an experienced professional. Not only can fixing industrial equipment be a complex project to diagnose and fix, but it can be dangerous as well. Professionals will take the required safety precautions necessary, know how to appropriately diagnose what caused the problem, and be able to repair the part without causing further damage.
Additionally, most professionals take the time to stay current with the changing technology, so they will have the knowledge and experience to ensure your industrial equipment is repaired properly. Hiring an inexperienced contractor may be inexpensive, but it is far more of a liability and may result in more expensive problems down the road. Be sure to contact a professional in the event of an industrial electronic control failure.
Check Your Backup Methods
Because memory modules and other critical parts are not impervious to problems, an easy step you can take to help get an electronic industrial control up and running quickly is to ensure important information is archived properly. This can help speed up the recovery process by having important information accessible and available in the event of a broken system or memory failure. Additionally, you’ll want to ensure all battery backups are fully charged and working properly so that your back-up won’t fail. Keeping an eye on the battery backup should be part of your preventive maintenance plan.
Don’t Forget About Preventive Maintenance
Preventive maintenance is one of the most important things you can do to keep your industrial systems working properly. Routinely inspect not only your equipment but the conditions around your equipment to minimize or eliminate potential risks from affecting your industrial system. For example, if there is the possibility of water contaminating your equipment, make sure you mitigate that issue before it becomes a problem that could result in a industrial system outage. Making sure the environment in which your industrial control system is housed is clean and free of debris or other contaminants will go a long way to keep functions operating smoothly.
Ensuring that you have a predictive maintenance plan in place will help keep all components of your industrial control system working properly and minimize the potential for a damaging control failure.
Call the Pros: Call Control System Labs
Overall, there are a number of things that you can do to help get your company back up and running quickly and with minimal downtime when a industrial control system component breaks down. If you’re ever in a bind and need an industrial control repair, contact us at Control System Labs. Reach out to us at 716-836-2100.