The modern industrial motor is incredibly sturdy and reliable. Nevertheless, motors do fail. The big problem with motor failure isn't the cost of replacing the motor. It's the loss of revenue that occurs while the line is down. Do you know the revenue per hour of each critical process in your facility? That's what your company loses every hour a motor essential to that process is down.
When management reduces the maintenance budget, maintenance managers often compensate by reducing motor maintenance to meet the new numbers. But this inevitably results in motor failure, which means revenue losses and then layoffs. What should you do?
Prepare a single-page summary, backed by graphs, that shows the relationship between maintenance dollars and revenue per line. When managers can see the direct correlation between revenue and that the maintenance keeps the revenue flowing, they can also see that reducing maintenance reduces revenue. Companies generally do not reward for revenue reduction.
