1.   Before you buy you should contact some people that have had the equipment for a couple of years. Get first hand feedback from their maintenance crew. 

2. The amount of maintenance and the number of parts that you have to replace could be a lot more than what the salesman and vendor is going to tell you. 

The complexity obviously various with the type of equipment. The most notorious are pick & place machines that require SMT feeders for the many size parts. The equipment is one set of problems, feeders and trolley/cart alignment are the second set of issues and the in-out conveyors and equipment setup and programming are some others. 



3. Capital Expense planning and PM database: 

 - The initial task is to go through the maintenance manual and create the PM database to establish the daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual tasks or electrical inspections. For each task include the labor time and required materials and any special tools. Where are the specialty tools and alignment plates going to be stored so every shift has access and not locked in someones tool box. 

- Establish a level 1 and level 2 spare parts list. 

- For very expensive parts, sub assemblies maybe you can keep the parts on-hand to minimize down time and not pay for the consigned part until you use it. 



4. Factors unique to your plant: I makes a huge difference if you have a 1 or 2 shift operation versus those that need to run all three shifts or a 4th shift operation where major PMs and calibration can't be done on the weekends or evenings.  

   - Now you'll have to factor in how much you should increase the number of parts to keep as spares as only you know the management and what the likely-hood is that you will be allowed to do maintenance in the prescribed time and if the people are going to be rushed through PM's and repairs. 



5. Training: Factory training is the best as all points are covered and the tasks is not skewed by a company technician who has their own opinion. 

     If a company technician is going to do the training of other technicians there must be a documented Check List of the tasks that the trainee was shown and actually performed a few times by themselves. Each task should be signed and dated and turned in to the supervisor once the whole list is completed. 



6. The repair cost depends on the operator training and attitudes. These factors are quite different then what the vendor has for info of a machine that runs in their Demo lab with factory trained personnel, usually engineers. 



Examples:  

1.  A test was run with men loading and unloading SMT feeders on a line versus woman doing the exact same job on another SMT line. 

The men broke a lot more feeders through fast rough handling because they are strong and the feeders are delicate.   

2. I've seen technicians causing a lot of repairs because they weren't trained or couldn't debug the problem without swapping out one part at a time and if there were two bad or worn parts then the issue became really bad. I've seen them replace sensors and forget which way the wires were run and when the screen printer went into operation the wires were ripped out. Another time they replaced the disk brake pads but put them in backwards and couldn't figure out why the printer didn't stop and got stop limit errors when they had new brakes! 

3. Due to lack of maintenance such as oiling and an not greasing expensive wave solder rails the aluminum extrusions were totally destroyed. 

 Greasing over old dried out grease or grease with metal shavings in it was another problem and destroyed the gears. 

4. Newest technology like a new untried Pick & Place system.  I've personally seen robot units that were supposed to be maintenance free that within a year failed and the vendor came back with specialized grease tool and process that had to be done monthly. Then there were the standard unit cost for rebuilt robots, of $18,000 or $30,000 for a new one. It didn't matter if it was a $2.00 internal LED or a $100 miniature gear drive or gear they wanted $18K with your unit traded in. 





 ----- Original Message ----- 
From: "prashant chopra" <[log in to unmask]> 
To: [log in to unmask] 
Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2011 8:23:35 AM 
Subject: [TN] Spare Part and Maintainence Cost Approximation 

Hi, 
  
I need help to have some approximation on the cost that should be included in the CAPEX for the spare part and maintainence of the equipments, fixtures and infrastructure in the electronic manufacturing factory. 
  
Any ideas on how this approximation should be worked out?  
  
Thanks. 
  
Rgds 
Prashant 

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