How can you protect your profitability?
Obsolescence is unavoidable. As technology evolves, older parts and components are phased out and replaced. Planning for this obsolescence isn’t just important for avoiding unplanned downtime in production – it’s also essential to protect your profitability. By keeping on top of your technology and taking a proactive approach to upgrades, you can improve your return on investment (ROI) and keep your equipment going for longer.
The importance of upgrades
Tetra Pak® Upgrade Kits are designed to keep machines running by replacing obsolete components. While the kits are an investment, they can not only reduce the likelihood of downtime, but they also extend the lifetime of existing technology, improving total ROI.
“We are constantly releasing Upgrade Kits to help our customers avoid obsolescence,” explains Ping Zhao, Senior Sales Support Specialist at Tetra Pak. “We can also help identify which are the most urgent and organise them by priority, creating a clear upgrade plan that minimises impact on the plant. So those business-critical parts where failure means a stoppage that are becoming obsolete, or are obsolete already, are the highest priority.
“Upgrades prevent downtime before it happens.”
One complication is that when some obsolete components fail, business can carry on as usual, but others can cost a business hundreds of hours of production if it’s an essential part where no direct replacement is available. Any production stop like this can reduce profitability, so this makes timely upgrades almost essential.
“Upgrades prevent downtime before it happens,” says Zhao. “Obsolescence is inevitable, and technology can fail unexpectedly. That’s why we have regular dialogue with our customers, and offer guidance on how best to plan upgrade installations to keep downtime to a minimum. We keep track of everything internally, so we can offer the right guidance at the right time.”
Risk in inaction
It’s simple to say that the right upgrades will extend equipment lifetime and reduce the risk of unplanned downtime, but what can happen if a business doesn’t take action to avoid obsolescence?
“We have one customer who experienced a breakdown where the digital motion control, DMC2, servo drives broke down,” says Zhao. “This breakdown meant the machine completely stopped. Unfortunately, this component was also obsolete – it had to be upgraded to the latest version, but the wait time was projected to be 79 days.
“This is a significant amount of time, and a big consequence as a result of what was an avoidable failure. We were able to shorten the lead time for the component significantly, so the consequences were not as big as they could have been, but now this customer takes a much more proactive approach and is more aware of the potential Upgrade Kit options that could help avoid downtime in the future.”
Timing is key
As technology is constantly being updated, obsolescence is common. This means it’s not unusual for a plant to need to upgrade a number of solutions within a similar timeframe. In addition, all parts and components have different lead times, so it’s important to be proactive and to plan upgrades in advance to reduce any potential risks and protect profitability for the long-term.
“There’s never a guarantee that technology will fail within a certain amount of time, but it will probably fail at some point, so it’s important to get ahead of the potential issues this would cause,” adds Zhao. “To replace things early can save weeks or months further in the future.”
“To replace things early can save weeks or months further in the future.”
The right upgrades can help protect your business
The businesses that do take a proactive approach to upgrades tend to have the same experience – unexpected downtime drops and there are fewer surprises, and we do see the trend that increasing numbers of customers are taking this approach.
Our Upgrade Kits are designed to help our customers avoid obsolescence, and even improve quality, safety and performance, but whatever each upgrade does, the goal is the same – to secure long-term productivity and profitability. A proactive approach will help a great deal towards securing optimal uptime, and we can help every step of the way.
