Unexpected machine downtime and machine maintenance can have a significant impact on a company’s bottom line. In manufacturing, downtime can lead to lost production, impacting customer satisfaction and profits. In addition, machine maintenance can be costly and time-consuming, impacting a company’s efficiency and bottom line.

Some common causes of machine downtime in manufacturing include scheduled maintenance, unexpected repairs, power outages, and equipment failures. While some of these causes are unavoidable, others can be mitigated with proper planning and execution. For example, scheduled downtime for maintenance can be minimized by performing maintenance during off-peak hours or by using predictive maintenance techniques. Unexpected repairs can be minimized by maintaining a well-stocked inventory of spare parts and training employees on basic troubleshooting techniques.

Whatever the case, planned and unplanned machine downtime is inevitable for job shops and manufacturers. Some businesses are mitigating issues caused by downtime with advanced planning and scheduling software. For example, MxAPS from Insight Works.

MxAPS helps avoid unexpected downtime by calculating machine hours to help drive a predictive maintenance schedule.

For example, based on your production schedule, a specific machine may accumulate 1,000 hours by month-end and require maintenance. Or, maybe you schedule regular monthly maintenance without knowing run hours. Perhaps the machine only has 600 hours and can go another 400 hours before maintenance is required. With MxAPS, maintenance downtime can be optimized and scheduled only when necessary.

When equipment is unexpectedly taken out of service or scheduled labor becomes unavailable, production planners may scramble to rebuild schedules to keep the utilization rate as high as possible while delivering orders on time. With MxAPS, it only takes a minute to re-run the production schedule based on the available equipment and labor. MxAPS understands your work and machine centers, including capacities, available labor, and order due dates. MxAPS uses this information to automatically generate re-jigged and realistic production schedules.

Typically advanced planning and scheduling software have only been attainable by large companies due to the associated integration and licensing costs. This is a thing of the past when it comes to MxAPS. MXAPS is built for smaller job shops and manufacturers who may not have the same volume as an auto manufacturer but suffer the same issues when it comes to downtime.

So, if you want to regularly create realistic production schedules that adapt quickly to unplanned downtime, then you’ll want to look at MxAPS from Insight Works. An affordable and effective advanced planning and scheduling tool designed specifically for smaller job shops and machine shops.

To learn more, check out the following video or visit http://JobShopAPS.com.