Because unscheduled downtime costs are almost always high, getting key products such as gearboxes repaired and back into service as quickly as possible means the fix is often little more than a sticking plaster rather than addressing the root cause of the failure. But new thinking is coming to the fore to change that Failing industrial gearboxes can be a real problem in any industry, but particularly so wherever there is ageing plant, older equipment, arduous applications or harsh environments. One plant manager, at a company producing construction materials, described the job of keeping production going as, 'a real scramble,' every time a gearbox failure occurred. The site operated numerous large conveyors, some steeply inclined, moving heavy aggregate around the plant. Gearbox failures had the potential to bring production to a complete halt because if any of the huge conveyors stopped working then a bottleneck could be created that could potentially halt other parts of the manufacturing process.
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