Maintenance Pays at Recycling Plants

Business owners are familiar with maintenance costs as a line item, but zeroing that line item out of a recycling company budget will ultimately prove even costlier. That was the message Buddy Himes of Himes Service Co., Waco, Texas, had for attendees of the Paper Recycling Conference & Trade Show, held in late June in New Orleans.

“For some plant operators, maintenance is a dirty word,” Himes commented. “It interferes with production so they don’t feel there is time for it, or employees are too busy repairing what is broke to be involved with preventive maintenance.”

But if plant operators can get over these and other barriers, they will ultimately be better off with a preventive maintenance schedule in place, said Himes. “Standard maintenance means when something is broke, you’ve got to fix it. Preventive maintenance means you tighten the bolt before it breaks, so you don’t have to fix it.”

One barrier to putting a maintenance plan in place at many recycling plants is finding adequate personnel, Himes noted. “The hardest thing to do is to find qualified personnel. You might get someone with a little welding or electrical experience, but that person wants good compensation—more than recycling plants want to pay. But that’s the person you need to have if you want your equipment up and running.”

For many repair and maintenance tasks, two people may be necessary, said Himes, although most recycling plants cannot afford two full-time maintenance staff members. In a standard size recycling plant with a baler, some conveyors, several fork lift trucks, possibly a shredder, possibly some rolling stock, and certainly with standard office and plant electrical and mechanical systems, one maintenance person will almost always be kept busy with several things to do at once. “Plant operators may wish to find an outside contractor to schedule regular preventive maintenance,” Himes suggested.

Among the tasks plant operators should not neglect, according to Himes, are maintaining the baler shearing blade gap distance to manufacturer specifications, sharpening the baler blade periodically, taking oil samples from machines every six months and keeping either an inventory of spare parts or a list of which nearby vendors carry other spare parts.

Cleanliness should not be discounted as a maintenance task either, said Himes. “Housekeeping is an important part of maintenance,” he remarked. Himes showed slides of such things as cooling vents blocked with dirt that would eventually lead to a conveyor motor overheating. Cleaning underneath pit conveyors, though unpleasant, can ultimately prevent a downtime situation, he also noted.

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Himes estimated that in a good program, “75 percent of all maintenance work should be preventive maintenance.”