M A G A Z I N E
register of hoses on site. That has come purely through Pirtek’s involvement, managing the hose register and health check of our hoses.” What runs inside the hoses is important too. “Pirtek is helping us with oil analysis,” says Matt, “so we’ve been doing periodic oil analysis checks on machinery, as required. We’ve been running live filtration on the hydraulic packs to improve the oil analysis to the kind of preventative standards that we want from the machinery.” Jason sums up, “Although we still have a lot of hoses to replace, we can undertake more proactive projects like moving on to Shell oil, which works in a different way and can be filtered better, improving the plant’s efficiency even further. “We’ve changed from a reactive to a proactive approach. Everything is now professional maintenance rather than breakdown reaction. We could have gone in and simply replaced hoses, but we didn’t. We fitted the hoses correctly and resolved issues to give much greater reliability. This way, we gained their trust. As you saw in Matt, we are very well looked upon now – trusted.”
Putting faith in Pirtek
Pirtek has been working on the contract since February 2018, going round, inspecting every machine on site, checking the hoses for damage, leaks and age, then inputting that data into the hose register and recommending replacement as and when. Pirtek found areas for improvement on fit and performance on hoses in place, starting from scratch to give the standard of finish to the customer’s requirements.
service Pirtek has provided, which can only lead to bigger and better things.
It all depends on shutdown periods. When Pirtek first started working there, its MSST was in all day, three to four days a week. Now it’s closer to spending two or three days there every three or four weeks, working through as much as he can in the day and then being called in as and when any other problems arise. It took two to three months to get the situation under control and stabilise things. When Pirtek first went in, there were leaks left, right and centre, damaged hoses, incorrectly fitted hoses. That was the hardest part. Since getting on top of all that, it’s been pretty straightforward. There is a total of anywhere between 600 and 700 hoses that need changing and Pirtek has done between 200 and 250, so there’s still a lot of work to be done. It is a large project but Pirtek is getting there slowly and surely. Some jobs are relatively straightforward, but others are more challenging because some hoses are routed through the walls to the power pack at the top. This means it’s not just a straightforward replacement, the MSST has to work out how to get the new one in before taking the old one out. Trying to get inside the centre of the press machines is quite tight but Pirtek always finds a way.
‘Pirtek always finds a way’
All the data is kept on a list so everyone knows what has and hasn’t been done. Pirtek has a copy and Matt’s got a copy so anyone can look up what needs to be done in the near future. As and when Matt decides he wants another batch of hoses, Pirtek goes in and sorts it out. To start with this was three or four dozen hoses at a time but it’s dropping down now as Pirtek gets on top of it. When Matt calls Pirtek in, they change a few here and there until they get the majority of it done. Whirlpool puts its faith in Pirtek to go in and do the job and that’s what Pirtek’s done. There have been no issues, no problems and Matt’s been over the moon with the
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