Two people in the maintenance department is all Eaton needs to keep the company running smoothly without too many unplanned stops. The key to this high efficiency is maintenance programmes from the ERP system IFS with good communication to the many production machines.
Eaton Electric ApS is one of the leading companies in Denmark when it comes to developing more efficient switchboards. Furthermore, over a long period of time, they have also worked to digitise their internal processes so that today they manage their entire business through the ERP system IFS.
At Eaton Electric, a large part of the production is now machine-controlled, which means that they can handle the entire production with around 20 employees, where previously they needed up to 200 employees. This shift places greater demands on the machines used, as their functionality is necessary to ensure production. At IFS, this challenge is met with maintenance programmes that are set up according to Eaton's needs. The programmes help ensure that machines are maintained regularly, that regular tests are performed, and that the company is alerted if sudden breakdowns occur.
Preventive Maintenance
By using an ERP system such as IFS, it is possible for Eaton to create maintenance programmes that have collected all the information needed for maintenance work in advance. Using IFS, these maintenance programmes can be set up to be triggered based on different methods.
When machines are used as much as they are at Eaton, there is a need to ensure the quality of the production equipment. One way to do this is through the use of condition-based maintenance, which is triggered based on parameters set by Eaton. For example, this could be a condition that a pressure plate must be maintained when the machine has pressed it 50,000 times. The information is sent to the IFS from the individual machines, making it possible to have data in the IFS that reflects the current consumption of operating hours on each individual machine. In this way, Eaton can take seasonal fluctuations into account, which allows for highly agile production.
However, unforeseen breakdowns can still happen no matter how many precautions you take as a company, and for many productions it will mean that all or part of the production stops running because the machines are often dependent on each other. Therefore, it is important that any breakdown can be dealt with quickly and efficiently, which Eaton does by using a different maintenance method, event-based maintenance. Here, the company can quickly respond to the message of a breakdown because the information comes from the individual machine and will be visible in IFS immediately in the form of alarms, thereby making the employee aware of the breakdown.
At Eaton Electric, they use both the event-based and condition-based methods for their maintenance, ensuring safe and stable operations.