In heavy industry—as in other fields—the most important part about being in business is simply staying in business. But “staying in business” may be more easily said than done, especially for those industries with stringent environmental compliance regulations. “Staying in business” means maximizing the working hours in the day, complying with environmental regulation, and otherwise not shooting yourself in the foot or committing unforced errors.
You rely on heavy machinery to keep you and your crew compliant with local, state, and federal regulations, but your heavy machinery relies on you to keep it up and running as powerfully as possible. Regular maintenance can boost performance, optimize daily operations, and generally increase performance across the board. Here’s how.
Stay Compliant
Air pollution equipment—such as an electrostatic precipitator—allows your team to stay focused on the day’s work. An optimally functioning electrostatic precipitator gives you and your crew the peace of mind to work at the highest levels of performance without worrying about compliance in the slightest.
Penalties for noncompliance are a great deal more inconvenient than regular maintenance. If your electrostatic precipitator (or another vital piece of equipment) is found to be less than adequate, sudden work stoppages, expensive emergency repairs, and even health and safety violations may soon follow.
In the interest of carrying on with your business, it's best to stick to a solid, disciplined maintenance schedule. At the very least, scheduling your maintenance ahead of time may save you from scheduling maintenance as an emergency.
Consistency is King
While it can be easy to neglect certain pieces of equipment that don’t (at first glance) have much to do with the daily operation of your facility, an overlooked electrostatic precipitator is more likely to underperform today or even malfunction altogether tomorrow without regular maintenance. Maintenance put off over weeks, months, or days is bound to catch up with you at some point. That bill will inevitably come due.
Without regular maintenance, you’re creating an unknowable variable in the daily operation of your facility. Will your electrostatic precipitator malfunction this week? Next? When it does malfunction, will it require just one part to fix or several? Will that malfunction cause cascade failure in your operation, requiring a work stoppage to correct? At the end of the day, we simply can’t know.
To stay open for business, compliant with regulations, and consistent in hours worked and revenue generated from month to month, regular maintenance helps us by removing a significant amount of doubt.
Power is Preferable
Environmental compliance is not measured in zeroes or ones. While local, state, and federal agencies set measurable thresholds for air pollution, it’s not always optimal to stay at or near the upper ranges of those levels. Ultimately, environmental compliance is important to you because staying compliant means staying open for business. Even flirting with the upper limits of “parts per million, etc.” is unwise.
Simply put, the more efficiently and powerfully your electrostatic precipitator runs, the better. If you never even approach a limit, you're a great deal less likely to exceed it. Staying as far away as possible from dangerous limits is simply the best strategy.
So while your neglected electrostatic precipitator may still keep you technically compliant with regulations, a better maintained piece of equipment could provide you with a valuable cushion.
Schedule Maintenance & Carry On
In some industries, it can often feel like there’s never a good time for maintenance. But in all honesty, every single machine—no matter how well it’s engineered—will require maintenance sooner or later.
Staying on top of your regularly scheduled maintenance is less about fixing what’s broken and more about never allowing anything critical to your operation to break in the first place. Even so, unforeseen problems may occur. But at least those issues won’t compound or worsen neglect to the point of a work stoppage or worse.
For peace of mind, consistent operation, and optimum performance, call AirTek to schedule your regular maintenance today. Let us worry about your machinery so that you don’t have to.
Maintain your equipment before it causes problems. Call AirTek.
The best emergencies are the ones that never happen. The second best emergencies are the ones we can see coming from a long way off. To stay prepared and spare yourself the arrival of an honest-to-goodness emergency, call AirTek to schedule regular maintenance today. At AirTek, we’ve been innovating, repairing, and maintaining electrostatic precipitators for more than three decades. Contact us or give us a call today at (334) 384-0457!
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