It’s a fact that maintenance is one of the most important aspects of any business, and your equipment is no exception. Preventive maintenance can help mitigate costly repairs, but many companies still do not follow best practices to keep their machinery in tip-top shape. In this blog post, we will discuss 9 tips for preventive maintenance strategies you should be using!
- Making Sure You Have the Right Tools
Having the correct tools for the job is paramount when conducting maintenance on your equipment. Not only does this ensure that you are doing it correctly, but it also helps prevent costly mistakes that may cause more damage to your equipment or subject you to loss of productivity due to downtime.
- Conducting Routine Checks and Maintenance
To help avoid major issues, you should conduct routine checks and maintenance for your equipment weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually depending on what is recommended in the manufacturer’s manual. It will help save money in the long run by making minor adjustments before they turn into expensive problems further down the road.
- Checking for Loose Bolts
Checking the bolts of your equipment regularly is another crucial component of maintaining your equipment. Loose or missing bolts can cause damage to other parts or even cause the whole machine to fail. To check for loose bolts, you should tighten them down to see if there is any movement at all when turning the bolt using a wrench. If there is any movement, you should remove it and replace it with a new one to prevent further damage down the line.
- Checking Electrical Wiring
Electrical wiring can be a problem when left untended, especially in daily-used machineries such as desktops, laptops, and printers. Before conducting regular maintenance, you should check the ports for any damage to the wires or signs of overheating. You should then check all of the cables for any frays or loose connections. After fixing any other problems, it may also be good to inspect to ensure no other issues could cause the fault again as well as using Seasafe cable tray systems.
- Cleaning and Disinfecting Machines
A common practice is to clean your equipment regularly using a disinfectant spray and a cloth or towel depending on what type of surface is being cleaned (i.e., glass, metal). While this is not always necessary for most desktops and laptops, they can get very dirty over time and benefit from this practice as well. Run Antivirus disinfection programs on computers regularly to ensure they are running optimally free of malware.
- Keeping Maintenance Records
Keeping maintenance records is another important aspect of conducting preventive maintenance on your equipment. It will help you track when you last did maintenance on the machine and ensure that it has been done for compliance reasons if that is something that your company follows. It also helps you view a history of your equipment and see what issues you have had with it in the past, thus allowing you to determine if more frequent maintenance is more appropriate for the machine.
- Making Sure Your Company Has a Backup Solution
One of the most critical elements of any business system is making sure your company has a backup solution in place if there is a hardware failure or data corruption. Taking regular backups of your equipment helps maintain uptime for your company and ensures minimal loss of data if it is necessary to restore your hardware after an accident. We recommend using enterprise backup solutions, which can backup PCs and laptops, servers, NAS devices, and SANs! Or try Acronis Backup Advanced for PC servers.
- Installing Regular Software Updates on Servers
Being sure that your servers are updated with the latest software patches can help minimize performance issues and keep them running smoothly over time.
Another option for those looking for more advanced solutions is implementing a Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) server on your network to download updates automatically for your servers and PCs. This solution can automate and control the backup and restore processes of all your physical and virtual hosts, as well as protect your company data.
- Checking Out Your PC Fans and Fan speeds
It is essential to check out your fans regularly, especially if your servers are running hot. Bad fan connections can cause them to overheat and cause damage, along with reducing the efficiency of the equipment by using up more power. It is also important to check out your fan speeds to ensure that you are not too low or high for specific equipment types or models. This can significantly affect the machine’s performance, especially if you are trying to run at maximum levels without breaking down the equipment.
Conclusion
As you have seen, there are many ways to keep your equipment in pristine condition. Any business owner needs to implement these strategies to avoid costly repairs and other issues with their machinery. The tips we’ve provided should get you started on the right track towards keeping everything running smoothly!
