Minimize Downtime with Support Services
How quickly can you recover?
For quite a few industrial facilities in the northeast, remanufacturing and repair services provided through Horizon Solutions help keep them up and running. In September, we had a blog post that looked into remanufacturing and how this option can really save you money versus buying new. In October, another blog post focused on third-party repair services and how this gives you an all-inclusive option for repairs on all types and brands of industrial automation equipment. This post will look at how you can minimize downtime risks with professional support services.
What are professional support services?
Professional support services are offered through Horizon Solutions in partnership with Rockwell Automation. These services exist in addition to the remanufacturing and repair services previously discussed. Typically (but not always), professional support service mean field engineering services. Our team will help you with your industrial automation equipment upgrades, safety, and networking. We bring a wealth of local expertise to your site. These services can be especially beneficial if your team or your facility does not have enough engineering bandwidth to accomplish tasks in-house. The services can also be very helpful, even if you do have the engineering brainpower in-house, but simply don’t have the resources needed for a certain timeline.
Why invest in them?
Professional support services help minimize the risk of downtime. When it comes to automated industrial equipment, it isn’t a question of IF a certain machine will go down, it’s a question of WHEN. You might get lucky, and your machine might have routine maintenance this December during a shutdown. That machine might keep churning in perfect working order from now until the next plant-wide shutdown in July. But what if it doesn’t? If your equipment goes down, how prepared are you to recover quickly?
The professional support services team, both Horizon Solutions and Rockwell Automation, can help you identify which areas and which machines might be most susceptible to breakdown, errors, and malfunctions. Our goal is to be proactive and identify the highest risk areas and develop manageable projects to minimize that risk. We want to take a turnkey approach and, when appropriate, take a holistic look at your control system(s). Sometimes a complete look and a broader review can be productive.
Examples of how we can help keep your plant up and running:
- Modernization of legacy equipment and eliminating unplanned downtime
- Risk assessment arc flash & LOTO to increase safety
- PLC/HMI PLC5 upgrades to bring equipment into current compatibility
- Networking establishing reliable connectivity
- Virtualization insights, improving, trends & successes
There are many other specific topics we can assist with; these are just a few common examples.
Getting started
Legacy equipment is a reality of this world. Older distributed control systems are common. Patchwork control systems are typical. Our goal is to minimize downtime risks. We want to take manageable bites. It isn’t feasible to just create a 100-percent brand-new control system from the ground up with new network connections and switches, and so forth. It is much more realistic to look at one area, one cell, or even one process. Using professional support services to successfully upgrade and improve one smaller area will give you the confidence to take on more ambitious projects in the future.
Do you have questions about support services? Our specialists are on hand to help you access your current situation and provide expert recommendations. Contact us today!