At Garvey, our goal is to help you maximize your throughput. If you’ve engaged with any of our content or watched any of our videos, you’ve heard this line before. But recently we’ve expanded our perspective of what maximizing throughput encompasses.
We’ve built our business on designing accumulation systems to keep lines running even when an individual machine fails. This happens when, for example, a labeler runs out of labels or a wrapping machine jams. These types of failures typically take only a few minutes to resolve, but they happen often, and over the course of days, weeks, months, and years, they can cost companies a lot of money in lost production.
But, these short failures aren’t the only instances of unplanned downtime in manufacturing plants. Equipment that’s not properly serviced and maintained can fail for many reasons, like mechanical failures or age-related wear and tear. These types of failures happen much less often than a labeler running out of labels, but they can cause significant downtime.
The supply chain shortages that started at the beginning of the pandemic (many of which still aren’t solved) brought into focus how fragile some of our most essential systems really are — we spoke with many customers who had to shut down their production lines entirely because they couldn’t get replacement parts for some of their equipment.
That’s why, earlier this year, we announced a new preventative maintenance program for our equipment: Garvey Annual Maintenance Agreements (GAMA). This program focuses on identifying and solving potential problems before they occur — via regular equipment inspections, managing spare parts inventory, and providing training for our customers’ onsite maintenance staff.
Ultimately, the goal of the GAMA program is the same as our company’s main mission: to maximize throughput by keeping lines running. If you would like to learn more about this unique program, contact our service department.