For any machinery that doesn’t already have an hour-meter (eg, small generators), we strongly recommend that you fit a cheap “induction” type meter. They’ll reduce your admin significantly, and make it a lot easier to ensure your plant is serviced only when it needs to be, and not before.
The meters are cheap (about £7 each on Amazon), and will quickly pay for themselves. Don’t buy vibration-triggered ones, because these tend to be a touch inaccurate – you’re better off with the “induction” type (which often double as tachometers). These work by a wire wrapped around (but not in contact with) the spark plug, which detects when the engine is running.
The alternative to hour-meters is to guesstimate machines’ use each day, but the downsides of this would be:
- You have to take a careful note every time the machine is used, rather than just checking its current total hours. This is extra admin, which is staff time wasted, which is money wasted. You’d be a lot better off in the long-run, buying an hour-meter at the outset.
- It tends to be fairly inaccurate, with people over/under estimating how many hours a machine has been running, or forgetting to take note every time it’s run.
1. Management tips, for successful implementation of your maintenance system.
2. Set up new users’ accounts.
3. Upload your logo.
4. Give all your assets a unique ID.
5. Setting up ‘categories’.
6. Add your assets individually, or upload multiple assets in a batch.
7. Set up your inspection and service intervals for each different model.
8. Fit hour-meters to any assets that don’t have them.
9. Times when you might want to make use of paper forms, instead of keying data in directly.
10. Admin tips.
