 | Watch the full interview at ProFood World: Managing Asset Reliability in Food Production |
Bryan Griffen: What are some of the best practices, beyond the spare parts list and the FATs, the project engineers can follow to ensure that the equipment is reliable and easy to maintain?
Shawn French: I'm a big believer in paper. So, you have a machine that needs to do something, so take the time to write an equipment specification or a needs document and be as descriptive as you can of the environment the machine will be in, the product, the packaging materials, what it's doing, what you needed to do today, what it might need to do in the future, how it's going to be operated, kind of the level of technology you can expect. If you have a standard electrical component, pneumatic component, mechanical component list, provide that to the vendor, provide them as much information as possible to define what it is you're expecting.
If you're going to run a factory acceptance test, have some words in there about that. If you're going to hold them to performance guarantee or a performance expectation, what that is, and how you will test that. And how you want to communicate throughout the project. So I think, for me, it starts with that sort of document that the vendor, the OEM then responds with a proposal.
