Unlike any other production units, dairy plants require different equipment for the processing, cleaning, and packaging of dairy products. You must be well aware that milk processing equipment is expensive, so it requires good care to get the right and effective results. As a maintenance manager, one of the critical roles you would always need to perform is maintaining the equipment in good running condition and repairing it when it stops working. Such a situation is generally termed “Breakdown Maintenance”.
What makes the regular maintenance of dairy plants more tricky is the unfavourable conditions under which dairy equipment is required. Different conditions such as chemical environment, high moisture, pressure stresses, and different temperatures affect the life of the material with which the machines are fabricated.
In a dairy plant, all processing equipment requires water, steam, and refrigeration, supplied via well-defined pipelines and cables. The most important aspect to note is that well-maintained service lines help reduce the losses and even facilitate a decent look. As a maintenance manager, following a well-defined protocol gives a dairy plant an excellent reputation.
Major maintenance challenges in Dairy plants
Milking Equipment Maintenance
As mentioned earlier, the most tricky and challenging part for a manager is to keep the milking area and equipment clean. It is essential because it plays a critical factor in extending the life of assets and even decreasing the costs of corrective chemical usage. Maintenance team also plays best efforts in keeping all rubber components in a good condition as even minor holes in air tubes and liners can bring major quality issues. In general, for a manager or maintenance team, most of the working hours are spent observing equipment and looking for leaks, thus ensuring the proper flow of water through the entire system.
Creating a Maintenance Schedule
Like any other production centre, in dairy plants, you cannot ignore having a maintenance schedule. The best you or management can do is draft one monthly spreadsheet that can give you all required data about the functioning or maintenance of all essential machines or equipment. One of the biggest blunders that one gets to view with monthly or annual maintenance schedules is that they are primarily based on counting days when the machine was running. But, experts recommend that the maintenance schedule consider the number of hours the required machine is operating. Schedule the Preventive Maintenance work orders for each machine in a CMMS software.
Keeping Maintenance Records Up to Date
You must have understood how difficult it is to keep dairy machines in dairy plants in good condition. Tracking every single piece of information and maintaining the correct records of all the work orders and maintenance performed is vital. It may not be easy, but you must have a detailed knowledge of the parts of your dairy equipment that got inspected and repaired or replaced with new spare parts. The best way you can do this is by listing all the equipment or good spare part that requires inspection or replacement regularly.
Always coordinating with partners
If the management has opted for a scheduled maintenance program with any equipment dealer, getting the maximum benefit from that relationship is crucial. Usually, the dealer may or may not track and maintain service, but in such a scenario, you as a manager must ensure that it stays on schedule. Also, it may not be easy but try to coordinate their service activities by a list of your checks and tasks. It can always prove beneficial if you have a well-defined system that allows respective equipment dealers to follow all checklists.
Prism CMMS Software for Dairy Maintenance
check this page which explains all the features of Prism software.
In general, the manager always ensures having the right maintenance management solution that can ensure optimal care for the well-being production process, which is only achievable by having the right CMMS software. With the Prism CMMS application, it is very much possible to handle daily dairy maintenance tasks properly. Using Prism Mobile Application, you can easily decrease the unwanted losses in productivity and even be able to sort out different issues without wasting time and extra money. Once you have software like Prism CMMS application, you can also streamline the technical activities in function operation in dairy production and further standardise the workflow procedure effortlessly. You can manage the ad hoc maintenance work order requests come from the production team, and also keep the necessary technical manuals in Prism software associated with the assets for easy access.
Streamline management of work order
Prism software helps you gather the maintenance required with the help of predefined fields integrated into the software interface. Easy to use user interface in Prism enable the production and maintenance team to manage manpower, and assets lot easier along with easy tracking of work orders.
Managing inventory in dairy production
As we are well aware of the fact that dairy production is mass production and it involves various activities, and therefore by having a Cloud-based CMMS dairy maintenance solution, it can get a lot easier to manage every single activity. You get a completely digital operation and also perform or manage smart inventory that can help in completing work orders and business growth. Managing work order requests can get a lot easier.
Centralize all operations effectively
As a manager, you can also get handy with centralized working operations, as the tool allows your staff to submit and accept requests, and you can even manage all vital business-related operations punctually, track the progress at every working stage, get live status or reports, and ultimately receive updates with just a few taps using a mobile-based application.
Update asset details
Unlike any other plants, any firm purchases various assets, and having said so with Prism software, you are in a good position to feed and manage all hardware details, store information for effective management of a total number of assets and secure the assets. The best aspect of the tool is that you can regularly update the assets and update all information from one department to another department.
Conclusion
In recent times, with the growth in demand, most dairy product manufacturers are facing a severe challenge in maintaining competent operations while keeping up with the speedily changing preferences of consumers. Buyers are looking for supreme quality and different varieties of milk products that can meet their value and health expectations. As a result, it get crucial for industrial dairies to be more flexible in their production procedure, which has raised more expectations on the maintenance team to ensure assets are in working conditions while upholding compliance requirements. Once you have CMMS software, you have a centralized platform for everything, starting from inventory, accessing, and analyzing data about the life or performance of dairy equipment and other facilities.