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Summary:
Good maintenance practice is one of the keys to achieving increase machine utilisation and hence better productivity. While well established in the engineering manufacturing industry, it adoption in the printing industry has yet to be fully measured. A study was undertaken to establish the current position of maintenance in the UK printing industry. An on-line web survey was undertaken in parallel with selected company visits to develop case studies. This paper presents a detailed analysis of the results of the survey set against the background maintenance practice in manufacturing and highlights best practice. While all the respondents to the questionnaire recognised that having a maintenance plan was essential for good quality production, less than 65% had a plan and less than half of these were satisfied with their maintenance. 90% of those who had a maintenance plan found that it reduced their press down time while 60% found it produced less waste. A range of other statistics showed that many small printers do not implement maintenance, even though they all believe it was a good concept. The main barriers were pressures of production and lack of understanding of engineering maintenance management. There were a number of printers who have condition monitoring fitted to their presses but only use it for fault finding. While many were using key performance indicators, the focus appeared to be on the measurement of the cost of consumables / parts, e.g. for use in litigation, rather than improving process performance.