Category: Maintenance & Breakdown Support

Root Cause Analysis: Using the 5 Whys and Fishbone Diagram on a Line Stoppage

The Fault That Keeps Coming Back

Every plant has one. A fault that stops the line, gets fixed, and returns a week later. Each time it is repaired promptly and each time the repair is logged as successful. Over a year it costs more production than any single major breakdown, and nobody has ever sat down to find out why it happens.

Root cause analysis is the discipline of asking that question properly. This guide covers the two most widely used techniques, the 5 Whys and the fishbone diagram, with a worked example from a filling line, and explains how to make the findings stick.

What Root Cause Analysis Is

Root cause analysis is a structured way of working back from a problem to the underlying reason it occurred, so that the fix prevents it recurring. It rests on a distinction between three things.

The symptom is what you see: the filler stopped on a low level alarm.

The direct cause is the immediate technical reason: a valve was slow to open.

The root cause is the reason the direct cause was able to happen: usually a gap in a system, such as maintenance, design, training or documentation.

Repairs address direct causes. Root cause analysis addresses the gap. If you stop at the direct cause you will be back.

The 5 Whys

The 5 Whys is the simplest technique and the one most plants should start with. It came out of the Toyota production system. You state the problem and ask why it happened. You take the answer and ask why again, and continue until you reach a cause that, if corrected, would prevent the problem.

Five is a guide and not a rule. Some problems resolve in three steps and some take seven. The signal that you have gone far enough is that the answer describes something the organisation controls and can change.

A Worked Example From a Filling Line

A can filler has stopped on a low bowl level fault eleven times in a month. Each stop lasted between ten and forty minutes. Each time, maintenance reset the fault and the line restarted.

Why did the filler stop? The product level in the bowl fell below the minimum.

Why did the level fall? The product supply valve was slow to open when the level control called for it.

Why was the valve slow? Its pneumatic actuator was not getting enough air.

Why was it short of air? A filter on the air line to that valve was partly blocked.

Why was the filter blocked? It had never been changed. It was added during a modification three years earlier and was never put on the maintenance schedule or shown on the drawings.

The direct cause is a blocked filter, fixed in ten minutes. The root cause is that modifications to the line were not being captured in the drawings and the maintenance system. Fixing that prevents this fault and an unknown number of others. The obvious next question is what else was added in that modification.

Where the 5 Whys Falls Short

The technique follows a single chain of cause and effect. Real problems often have several contributing causes, and a 5 Whys done by one person tends to follow whichever path that person already suspected. It can also stop too early, at an answer like operator error, which is almost never a root cause. If a person made a mistake, ask why the system made that mistake easy.

For problems with more than one plausible cause, a wider tool is needed first.

The Fishbone Diagram

The fishbone diagram, also called an Ishikawa diagram after the Japanese engineer Kaoru Ishikawa, or a cause and effect diagram, is a way of laying out all the possible causes of a problem before deciding which to pursue. The problem is written at the head of the fish. Bones branch off for each category of cause, and the team adds possible causes under each.

In manufacturing the usual categories are six.

People. Training, experience, fatigue, staffing, handover between shifts.

Machine. Wear, settings, maintenance condition, design limitations, modifications.

Method. Procedures, changeover practice, cleaning routines, work instructions.

Material. Product, packaging, suppliers, batch variation.

Measurement. Sensors, calibration, inspection methods, the data itself.

Environment. Temperature, humidity, washdown, dust, lighting.

The value is breadth. A team that is convinced a fault is electrical will, when made to fill in the material bone, remember that the problem started when the label supplier changed.

Using the Two Together

The techniques complement each other. Use a fishbone to open the question up and collect every credible cause. Use evidence to rule causes in or out, since most can be eliminated quickly with data you already hold. Then run a 5 Whys on each cause that survives.

For the filler example, a fishbone might have raised air supply, valve wear, level sensor drift, a change in product viscosity and a control setting altered after a software change. Checking the air pressure at the valve would have pointed to the first within the hour.

Running a Session That Works

Pick the right problems. Root cause analysis takes time. Reserve it for faults that are expensive, repeated or dangerous. A simple trigger works well: any fault that occurs three times, any stop over a set duration and any safety incident.

Get the right people. The operator who saw it, the tradesperson who fixed it and someone who understands the control system. Three or four people is enough.

Go and look. Hold the session at the machine where possible. Assumptions made in a meeting room are often wrong.

Use evidence. Alarm histories, drive fault logs, trends, maintenance records and the failed part itself. Every why should be supported by something you can point to.

Keep blame out of it. People stop telling the truth when the exercise is about fault. The question is always what allowed this, never who did it.

Write it down. One page: the problem, the chain of causes, the evidence, the actions, an owner and a date for each.

From Cause to Corrective Action

An analysis is only as good as the action that follows. Weak actions are reminders, retraining and instructions to be more careful. Strong actions change the system: a design change that removes the failure, a maintenance task added with a frequency, a drawing corrected, a spare part stocked, a setting locked.

Then check that it worked. Set a date to review whether the fault has recurred. If it has, the root cause was not found and the analysis should be reopened without embarrassment. That is how the method is supposed to work.

Common Root Causes in Production Plants

Across many investigations the same themes recur. Modifications that were never documented. Maintenance tasks that exist on paper and are skipped under production pressure. Settings changed to work around a problem and never restored. Spare parts that are near enough but not identical. Sensors positioned where washdown or product build up defeats them. Knowledge held by one person and lost when they changed shift or left.

None of these is exotic. That is the encouraging part: most root causes are within a plant’s power to fix.

Where BevTech Fits

BevTech is a family owned engineering business in Richlands, Brisbane, with more than 25 years in beverage and FMCG manufacturing. Our industrial electricians, automation engineers and mechanical trades are often called to the faults that keep coming back, and because all three disciplines and a machine shop sit in the same business, we can follow a cause wherever it leads, from a line of PLC logic to a worn change part. We also produce the as-built drawings and documentation that stop undocumented modifications becoming next year’s mystery.

If your plant has a recurring fault that nobody has had time to get to the bottom of, use the contact form at bevtech.com.au/contact.

October 6, 2026
Total Productive Maintenance: A Plant Manager’s Guide to TPM

Maintenance Is Not Only the Maintenance Department’s Job

In most plants, operators run machines and maintenance fixes them. When something breaks, production waits for a tradesperson. When nothing is broken, maintenance works through a schedule and operators have little to do with the condition of the equipment in front of them. Total productive maintenance starts from the view that this division is the main reason equipment performs below its potential.

This guide explains what total productive maintenance is, the ideas that hold it together, what it asks of operators and tradespeople, and how to begin without launching a programme that fades in six months.

What Total Productive Maintenance Is

Total productive maintenance, usually shortened to TPM, is an approach to equipment management that aims to maximise the effectiveness of plant by involving everyone who works with it. It was developed in Japan in the 1960s and 1970s, with the car component maker Nippondenso generally credited as the first to apply it across a company, and it was set out for a wider audience by Seiichi Nakajima of the Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance.

Each word in the name does some work. Total means everyone, from operators to managers. Productive means the aim is output, not maintenance activity for its own sake. Maintenance means keeping equipment in the condition it was designed to be in, and improving on it.

The Six Big Losses

TPM begins by naming what equipment loses. The six big losses are grouped under three headings.

Availability losses. Breakdowns, and time spent on setup and adjustment, including changeovers.

Performance losses. Small stops and idling, where the machine halts briefly and restarts, and reduced speed, where it runs slower than it was designed to.

Quality losses. Defects and rework during steady production, and losses at startup before the process settles.

The value of the list is that it makes hidden losses visible. Breakdowns are logged and discussed. A filler that has been run ten per cent below design speed for three years, because it jams if pushed, is rarely recorded as a loss at all.

How TPM Connects to OEE

Overall equipment effectiveness is the measure TPM uses to keep score. It multiplies three ratios that correspond to the three groups of losses: availability, performance and quality.

The figure often quoted as world class is about 85 per cent. It comes from multiplying 90 per cent availability by 95 per cent performance and 99 per cent quality, which gives 84.6 per cent. Treat it as a reference point and not a target. A line with frequent changeovers and many product formats will sit well below a line that runs one product all week, and both can be well managed. The useful comparison is a line against its own history.

The Eight Pillars

TPM is usually described as eight pillars resting on a foundation of workplace organisation.

Autonomous maintenance. Operators take on routine care of their equipment: cleaning, inspection, lubrication and minor adjustments.

Focused improvement. Small cross functional teams work on specific losses, one at a time.

Planned maintenance. Maintenance is scheduled on the basis of condition and history, so that it happens before failure.

Quality maintenance. Equipment conditions that cause defects are identified and controlled, so that quality is built in and not inspected in.

Early equipment management. What has been learned from running and maintaining existing plant is fed into the design and purchase of new plant.

Training and education. Operators and tradespeople are given the skills the other pillars require.

Safety, health and environment. Improvements must not introduce risk, and a well maintained plant is a safer one.

TPM in administration. The same thinking is applied to planning, purchasing and other support functions that affect the floor.

No plant needs to start with all eight. Most begin with the first three.

Autonomous Maintenance in Practice

Autonomous maintenance is the pillar that most changes daily life on the floor, and the one most often misunderstood. It does not mean turning operators into fitters, and it does not mean handing maintenance work to production to save money.

It starts with cleaning, and the phrase used in TPM is that cleaning is inspection. An operator who wipes down a machine at the end of a shift sees the oil weep, the loose guard, the frayed cable and the sensor bracket that has moved. Those observations are tagged and recorded. Simple ones the operator fixes. The rest go to maintenance.

From there the work progresses in stages. Sources of contamination are removed and hard to reach areas are made accessible. Standards for cleaning, inspection and lubrication are written by the people who will follow them. Operators are trained to understand how their machine works and what normal looks like. Over time, routine checks move from maintenance to the operator, and tradespeople are freed for work that needs their skills.

What Changes for the Maintenance Team

TPM is sometimes resisted by tradespeople who see it as a threat. In practice it moves them up the value chain. With operators handling routine care and early detection, maintenance spends less time on callouts and more on planned work, condition monitoring, root cause analysis and equipment improvement.

It also raises the standard expected. When operators raise fifty defect tags in a month, maintenance has to deal with them. A backlog of tags that nobody acts on is the fastest way to end operator involvement.

Why TPM Programmes Fail

It is launched as a campaign. Posters and a kickoff event, then nothing changes in how time is allocated.

No time is given. Operators cannot clean and inspect if the line is never stopped for it. If ten minutes a shift is not protected, autonomous maintenance does not exist.

Tags are not closed. Operators report defects and see no response.

It is run by one department. TPM owned only by maintenance, or only by a continuous improvement team, misses the point of the first word.

The equipment is too far gone. A machine with years of accumulated defects has to be restored to a sound base condition before operators can be asked to keep it there.

Measures are used to judge and not to learn. If OEE becomes a stick, the data stops being honest.

How to Start Small

Choose one line or one machine, preferably one that matters and has a willing team. Measure its losses for a few weeks to establish a baseline. Stop it for a day and carry out an initial clean with operators, tradespeople and supervisors working together, tagging every defect found. Fix the defects, starting with safety and with the ones causing losses. Write simple cleaning and inspection standards with the operators. Protect a short period each shift to carry them out. Review the tags and the numbers every week.

Run this for three months, show the result and then move to the next machine. A plant that restores and sustains one line has learned more than one that announces TPM everywhere.

The Role of Outside Engineering Support

The initial clean on a neglected machine typically produces a long list of defects, and many are beyond what an in-house team can clear alongside normal work: worn parts with long lead times, guards that need remaking, sensors in the wrong place, sources of leakage that need a design change. Getting through that list quickly matters, because the momentum of a pilot depends on people seeing their tags acted on.

Where BevTech Fits

BevTech is a family owned engineering business in Richlands, Brisbane, with more than 25 years in beverage and FMCG manufacturing. Plants running improvement programmes use us to clear the engineering backlog those programmes uncover: machining replacement and redesigned parts in our own workshop, fabricating guards and covers, relocating sensors, correcting control faults on Allen Bradley and Siemens systems and restoring machines to base condition during planned stops and shutdowns. Our free FMCG and Beverage Plant Shutdown Planning Checklist, available on our website, is a useful companion for planning restoration work.

If your improvement team has a list of defects that is growing faster than it is closing, use the contact form at bevtech.com.au/contact.

October 6, 2026
CMMS Explained: Does Your Plant Need Maintenance Management Software?

The Whiteboard, the Spreadsheet and the Fitter Who Remembers

Many plants run maintenance on three systems: a whiteboard of jobs, a spreadsheet of scheduled tasks that was last fully up to date some time ago, and the memory of an experienced tradesperson who knows when every gearbox was last changed. It works, until the plant grows, an auditor asks for records or that tradesperson retires.

A computerised maintenance management system, or CMMS, is meant to replace all three. This guide explains what a CMMS does, how to tell whether your plant needs one, what to look for when choosing and why so many implementations disappoint.

What a CMMS Is

A CMMS is software that holds a plant’s maintenance information in one place and manages the work that flows from it. Whatever the product, the core functions are the same.

An asset register. A structured list of every piece of equipment, usually arranged as a hierarchy from site to line to machine to component.

Work orders. A record of every job: what was requested, who did it, how long it took, what parts were used and what was found.

Preventive maintenance scheduling. Recurring tasks generated automatically by calendar date, by running hours or by production count.

Spare parts. Stock levels, locations, reorder points and which parts fit which machines.

History. Everything that has been done to each asset, searchable.

Reporting. Backlog, compliance with the schedule, cost by asset and failure trends.

Larger systems are sold as enterprise asset management and add purchasing, contractor management and financial integration. For a single manufacturing site the distinction matters less than whether the system is actually used.

Seven Signs Your Plant Needs One

Scheduled maintenance is missed and nobody notices until something fails. The same fault recurs and there is no record of what was done last time. Spare parts are bought in a hurry because nobody knew the shelf was empty. An audit asks for evidence that a task was done and producing it takes a day. Maintenance cost cannot be attributed to a line or a machine. Knowledge of the plant sits with one or two people. Work requests arrive by phone, radio, email and conversation, and some are lost.

One or two of these can be managed with discipline and a good spreadsheet. Four or more suggest the plant has outgrown its tools.

When a Spreadsheet Is Enough

A small site with a few dozen assets, a maintenance team of two or three and a stable schedule can run well on a carefully kept spreadsheet. The test is not size alone. It is whether work is being done on time, whether history can be found when needed and whether the system survives a change of personnel. If the answer to all three is yes, software will add cost without adding much.

What a CMMS Makes Possible

The first benefit is that scheduled work stops being forgotten. The second is more valuable and takes longer: decisions based on history. With a year or two of reliable work orders you can see which machines consume the most labour, which failures recur, which preventive tasks never find anything and could be done less often, and which assets are costing more to keep than to replace.

It also changes the conversation with production and finance. A request for a shutdown day or a capital replacement backed by data is harder to refuse than one backed by experience alone.

Why So Many Implementations Disappoint

Buying the software is the easy part. Most disappointment comes from what happens next.

Poor asset data. The register is built from an old equipment list that does not match the floor. Work orders are raised against the wrong machine and the history is useless.

Too many scheduled tasks. Every recommendation from every manual is loaded on day one. The system generates more work than the team can do, compliance collapses and people stop trusting the schedule.

Work orders with no information. A job closed with the single word fixed tells the next person nothing. The value of the system is in the detail recorded at close out.

Tradespeople do not use it. If entering a job takes longer than doing it, it will not be entered. Systems that work on a phone or tablet at the machine are used. Systems that need a desktop in the office are not.

No owner. Someone has to keep the data clean, adjust schedules and chase open work. In most successful sites that is a maintenance planner, even a part time one.

Reports nobody reads. A system that produces data but changes no decisions is an expensive diary.

Choosing a System

The market is crowded and the products are more alike than their marketing suggests. For a manufacturing plant the following matter most.

Ease of use on the floor. Can a tradesperson open, update and close a work order on a mobile device in under a minute? Test this with your own people before deciding.

Simple work requests. Can an operator report a fault without training, ideally by scanning a code on the machine?

Flexible scheduling. Does it handle tasks based on running hours or production counts as well as dates?

Spare parts linked to assets. Can you see what parts a machine needs and whether they are in stock?

Useful standard reports. Schedule compliance, backlog, and the split between planned and reactive work, without custom development.

Integration. Can it take running hours or fault signals from your control systems, and exchange data with purchasing or finance, if you want that later?

Getting your data out. If you change systems in five years, can you export your history?

Resist buying for features you might use one day. The best system is the one your team will keep up to date.

A Sensible Order for Implementation

Start with the asset register, and build it by walking the plant, not from an old list. Agree a naming and numbering convention and label the equipment to match. Load a small number of critical preventive tasks, the ones you are confident are worth doing, and add more later as the team shows it can keep up. Get every job, including breakdowns, recorded as a work order from day one. Define what must be written at close out: what was found, what was done, what parts were used. Add spare parts once work orders are flowing. Introduce reports only when there is enough data to mean something.

Expect the first six months to be about habits and the real payoff to come in the second year.

The Measures Worth Watching

Schedule compliance. The share of preventive tasks completed on time. If it is low, there are too many tasks or too few people.

Planned versus reactive work. The proportion of labour hours spent on planned jobs against breakdowns. Movement towards planned work is the clearest sign that maintenance is getting ahead.

Backlog. How many weeks of work are waiting. Some backlog is healthy. A growing one is a warning.

Repeat failures. The same fault on the same asset, which a CMMS makes visible for the first time.

Where BevTech Fits

BevTech is a family owned engineering business in Richlands, Brisbane, with more than 25 years in beverage and FMCG manufacturing. We are not a software supplier. We do the work a maintenance system depends on and generates: electrical condition audits that establish what equipment a site has and what state it is in, as-built drawings that match the plant, planned maintenance and shutdown crews to clear the schedule, and 24/7 breakdown support for the faults that still occur. When we attend a job we record what we found and what we did, so that your history stays complete whichever system holds it.

If your maintenance schedule is asking more than your team can deliver, use the contact form at bevtech.com.au/contact.

October 6, 2026
MTBF and MTTR Explained: How Often Equipment Fails and How Fast You Recover

Two Numbers That Describe a Line’s Reliability

When a production line underperforms, the first argument is usually about why. Maintenance says the equipment is old. Production says repairs take too long. Both may be right, and without numbers the argument never ends. MTBF and MTTR are the two measures that separate the questions. One tells you how often equipment fails. The other tells you how long it takes to get it back.

This guide explains what each measure means, how to calculate them, how they combine into availability and how to decide which one to work on.

What MTBF Means

MTBF stands for mean time between failures. It is the average length of time a repairable piece of equipment runs before it fails. A higher figure means failures are less frequent.

The calculation is total operating time divided by the number of failures in that period. Operating time is the time the equipment was actually running, not the time it was scheduled to run.

A related term, MTTF or mean time to failure, is used for items that are replaced and not repaired, such as a bearing or a lamp. For a production machine that is repaired and returned to service, MTBF is the right measure.

What MTTR Means

MTTR stands for mean time to repair. It is the average time taken to restore equipment after a failure, measured from the moment it stops to the moment it is producing again.

The calculation is total downtime from failures divided by the number of failures.

Be aware that the letter R is used in different ways. Some organisations mean repair, some recovery and some respond, and the clock starts and stops at different points in each. What matters is that your site chooses one definition and keeps to it. The most useful for production is the full stop to start time, because that is what the plant actually loses.

A Worked Example

A packaging line was scheduled to run for 400 hours in a month. It had 8 failures, which together caused 20 hours of downtime.

Operating time is 400 hours less 20 hours, which is 380 hours.

MTBF is 380 hours divided by 8 failures, which is 47.5 hours. On average the line runs for about two days of continuous production between failures.

MTTR is 20 hours divided by 8 failures, which is 2.5 hours. On average each failure costs two and a half hours.

How They Combine Into Availability

Availability is the proportion of scheduled time that equipment is able to run. It can be calculated directly from the two measures: MTBF divided by the sum of MTBF and MTTR.

For the example, that is 47.5 divided by 50, which is 95 per cent. The same answer comes from 380 operating hours out of 400 scheduled.

The formula shows something important. There are two ways to raise availability, and they are quite different jobs. If this plant halved its MTTR to 1.25 hours with the same number of failures, downtime would fall to 10 hours and availability would rise to 97.5 per cent. If it instead halved the number of failures to 4, with repairs still taking 2.5 hours each, downtime would also fall to 10 hours and availability would again be 97.5 per cent. The result is the same. The work required to get there is not.

What Drives MTBF

Time between failures is mostly determined before the failure happens.

Maintenance. Whether wear is found and corrected before it causes a stop.

Operating conditions. Running within design speed and load, correct setup, clean and lubricated equipment.

Design and installation. Components suited to the environment, particularly in washdown areas, and protection correctly set.

Quality of repairs. A repair that fixes the symptom and not the cause guarantees the next failure.

Parts. Correct, genuine or properly made replacements in place of near enough substitutes.

Improving MTBF is slow. It takes months of consistent maintenance and root cause work before the figure moves, and it is where the largest long term gains are.

What Is Hidden Inside MTTR

Repair time is rarely one thing. Break an average stoppage into stages and the picture changes.

Detection. How long before someone realises there is a failure and not a pause.

Response. How long until a person who can fix it reaches the machine. Out of hours this can be the largest part.

Diagnosis. How long to find the fault. This depends heavily on drawings, software access and familiarity with the machine.

Parts. How long to get the replacement, from the shelf or from a supplier.

Repair. The hands on work, which is often the shortest stage.

Restart. Testing, cleaning where product was exposed and bringing the line back to rate.

In many plants the actual repair is a small part of the total, and most of the time is spent waiting, searching and working out what is wrong. That is good news, because those stages can be shortened quickly and cheaply: current drawings at the machine, software backups, labelled panels, critical spares held on site and a response arrangement that puts the right person there fast.

Which One Should You Work On

Look at the pattern behind the averages.

Few failures, long repairs. High MTBF and high MTTR. The equipment is fundamentally sound and the plant is poorly prepared when it does fail. Work on response, diagnosis and spares.

Many failures, short repairs. Low MTBF and low MTTR. The team has become very good at fixing the same things. Work on root causes and maintenance, because the skill being shown in repair is being wasted on problems that should not recur.

Many failures, long repairs. Both are poor. Start with MTTR for quick relief, then turn to MTBF.

As a rule, MTTR improvements arrive in weeks and MTBF improvements in months. Most plants benefit from starting with the first while planning the second.

Five Traps in the Numbers

What counts as a failure. If a thirty second stop is a failure, MTBF will look terrible and MTTR excellent. Set a threshold and treat short stops separately.

Averages hide extremes. Seven failures of twenty minutes and one of seventeen hours give a similar MTTR to eight failures of two and a half hours. They are different plants. Look at the spread.

Mixing planned and unplanned stops. Changeovers and cleaning are not failures.

Too little data. A machine that failed twice in a month has no meaningful average. Use longer periods for reliable equipment.

Comparing unlike lines. A high speed filler and a palletiser should not share a target. Compare each asset with its own history.

Starting to Measure

You need three things for each failure: when the machine stopped, when it restarted and what failed. A shift log will do to begin with. Calculate both measures monthly for each main line, plot them and look at the direction. The trend matters more than the absolute value. If you can also record when the tradesperson arrived and when the fault was identified, you can split MTTR into its stages, which shows exactly where the time is going.

Where BevTech Fits

BevTech is a family owned engineering business in Richlands, Brisbane, with more than 25 years in beverage and FMCG manufacturing. We work on both sides of the availability equation. For MTTR, we provide 24/7 breakdown support and shift coverage, fast and methodical fault diagnosis on Allen Bradley and Siemens systems, as-built drawings and a machine shop that can make a part the same day instead of waiting on a supplier. For MTBF, we carry out electrical condition audits, planned maintenance and shutdown work, and engineering fixes for the faults that keep recurring.

If your numbers show where the time is going and you want help getting it back, use the contact form at bevtech.com.au/contact.

October 6, 2026
Electrical Fault Finding on Production Lines: A Method That Shortens Downtime

Why Some Breakdowns Take Twenty Minutes and Others Take a Shift

Two production lines stop with the same symptom. On one, the electrician has the line running again in twenty minutes. On the other, six hours and four replaced components later, the fault is still there. The difference is rarely luck and rarely the size of the toolbox. It is method, and it is how well the plant has prepared for the day something fails.

This guide describes how experienced industrial electricians approach electrical fault finding on production equipment, what the rules in Queensland say about testing live equipment, and what a plant can do in advance to make every fault faster to find.

Step One: Understand the Symptom

Good fault finding starts with questions, not a multimeter. What exactly stopped? What was the machine doing at the time? Was there an alarm, and what did it say? Has it happened before, and when? What changed recently: a product changeover, a washdown, a repair, a software edit?

The operator who was standing there usually holds half the answer. An electrician who walks past the operator to open a panel has already lost time. The most useful habit a plant can build is to have operators write down the alarm text and the time before anyone presses reset.

Step Two: Read What the Machine Is Telling You

Modern equipment is generous with information. The HMI alarm history shows what tripped and in what order. Variable speed drives store fault codes with the conditions at the moment of the trip. Safety relays and safety controllers show which channel opened. The PLC itself shows the live state of every input and output.

The first alarm in the sequence is usually the one that matters. The dozen that follow are consequences. An electrician who can go online with the controller can see in seconds which condition is preventing the machine from running, where an electrician without the software can only guess.

Step Three: Narrow It Down Logically

Every control circuit is a chain: a sensor, a cable, an input, logic, an output, a cable and a device. The fault is somewhere in that chain. The efficient approach is to test at the midpoint and discard the half that is working, then repeat. Three or four well chosen tests will isolate a fault that could take thirty random ones.

Start with the simple and likely causes. Sensors that have been knocked out of position, connectors loosened by vibration, cables damaged where they flex, water in a junction box after washdown and blown fuses account for a large share of production faults. Failed PLC hardware is far less common than people assume.

Step Four: Prove It Before You Replace It

Swapping parts until the fault disappears is the most expensive form of fault finding. It consumes spares, it can introduce new faults, and when the machine finally runs nobody knows which change fixed it. Worse, a part that was not faulty goes back on the shelf marked as suspect.

The discipline is to form a theory, test it, and only then replace the component. If a new sensor fixes the problem, find out why the old one failed. A sensor destroyed by a misaligned guide rail will be destroyed again next week.

Intermittent Faults

The hardest faults are the ones that are not present when the electrician arrives. They demand patience and evidence. Useful techniques include trending the suspect signal in the PLC, adding a temporary latch in the logic to capture a momentary drop, logging drive data, and checking whether the fault correlates with heat, vibration, a particular product or a particular time of day.

Thermal expansion, cables that fail only when a machine is at one end of its travel and electrical noise from a nearby drive are common culprits. With intermittent faults the plant’s records matter more than anything the electrician brings.

What Queensland Law Says About Testing Live Equipment

Fault finding often requires measurements on energised circuits, and this is an area where the rules are strict. In Queensland, electrical work on or near energised electrical equipment is generally prohibited. Near means within 3 metres of an exposed energised part.

Energised work is permitted only in prescribed circumstances, which include testing and situations where there is no reasonable alternative. When it is carried out, the requirements include a risk assessment, a safe work method statement, the use of suitable testing equipment and protective equipment by a competent person, keeping unauthorised people out of the immediate area and consultation with the person who manages or controls the workplace. A safety observer is required unless the work is testing only and the risk assessment shows there is no serious risk.

For a plant manager this has two practical consequences. First, expect a competent electrician to isolate wherever testing can be done dead, and to take a few minutes over paperwork when it cannot. Second, your site is part of the process. The electrician must consult you, and the pressure to get the line back must not become pressure to skip the controls.

Reset or Repair

A reset restores production. A repair removes the cause. Both have their place, because sometimes the right decision is to run until the next planned stop. The mistake is to reset and forget.

A simple rule works well. Any fault that is reset without a known cause gets written down. Any fault that appears three times gets investigated properly at the next opportunity, with the machine stopped and the time to do it. The list of repeat resets is often the best source of items for a maintenance day or a shutdown.

What the Plant Can Do in Advance

Most of the time lost in a breakdown is lost before the fault finding starts. These are the preparations that pay back most.

Current drawings. Schematics that match the panel, kept where they can be found at night. This is the single biggest factor in fault finding time.

Software backups. A current copy of every PLC, HMI and drive configuration, stored on site and off it, with the passwords.

Labelling. Devices, cables and terminals labelled to match the drawings.

Critical spares. The specific sensors, drives, contactors and power supplies your lines depend on, identified in advance and held where the night shift can reach them.

A fault log. Date, machine, symptom, cause and fix. After a year it becomes the most useful document in the maintenance office.

Operator notes. Alarm text and time recorded before reset.

When to Call for Help

In-house teams handle most faults well. The time to call for support is when a fault has outlasted the people on shift, when it involves a control platform nobody on site can go online with, when a safety circuit is implicated, or when the same fault keeps returning. Calling early is cheaper than calling after four hours of lost production.

Fault Finding Support From BevTech

BevTech is a family owned engineering business in Richlands, Brisbane, with more than 25 years in beverage and FMCG manufacturing. Our industrial electricians provide fast, methodical diagnosis of electrical and control faults during production, working on Allen Bradley and Siemens platforms across fillers, seamers, cappers, labellers, conveyors and CIP systems. We offer 24/7 breakdown support and shift coverage across Brisbane and South East Queensland, and because our mechanical trades and machine shop are part of the same business, a fault that turns out to be mechanical is still our problem to solve.

If recurring faults are costing you production, use the contact form at bevtech.com.au/contact and we will arrange a time to look at the line.

This article is a general guide current as at October 2026. Confirm the requirements for energised work at your own site with the Electrical Safety Office.

October 6, 2026
Electrical Maintenance for Manufacturing Plants: Building a Planned Programme

Electrical Failures Give Warning, if Anyone Is Looking

Mechanical wear announces itself. Bearings get noisy, chains slacken, belts fray. Electrical deterioration is quieter. A termination loosens a little more each time the cable heats and cools. A drive’s cooling fan slows. Dust builds on a contactor. Nothing looks wrong until the afternoon a switchboard trips and takes half the plant with it.

Most of these failures are detectable weeks or months in advance with simple tests. A planned electrical maintenance programme is how a plant finds them on its own timetable. This guide sets out what the regulations require in a Queensland manufacturing plant, what good practice adds, and how to build a programme that fits around production.

The Legal Minimum in a Queensland Manufacturing Plant

Queensland’s electrical safety regulation sets inspection and testing requirements according to the type of work carried out at a workplace, and manufacturing work has its own rules. They apply to what the regulation calls specified electrical equipment, which is equipment with a current rating of not more than 20 amps and includes extension leads and portable outlet devices.

Double insulated equipment must be inspected, tested and tagged at intervals of no more than 12 months.

Equipment that is not double insulated must be inspected, tested and tagged at intervals of no more than 6 months.

Fixed safety switches need a push button test at least every 6 months and an operating time and current test at least every 12 months.

Portable safety switches are not permitted in manufacturing work at all.

Testing and tagging must be done by a person appointed as competent by their employer, and the relevant standard is AS/NZS 3760. These are minimum intervals. Equipment in harsh areas, such as washdown zones, deserves more frequent attention.

Why the Minimum Is Not a Maintenance Programme

Notice what those rules cover: portable equipment, leads and safety switches. They are aimed at protecting people from electric shock, which is essential. They say almost nothing about the switchboards, motor control centres, drives and motors that keep a plant producing. A site can be fully up to date with testing and tagging and still be weeks away from a major electrical failure.

A maintenance programme has to cover both: the safety obligations and the reliability of the fixed plant.

Start With an Electrical Audit

You cannot plan maintenance for equipment you have not listed. An electrical audit is a condition survey of the site that produces an asset list, a description of the condition of each item and a ranked list of what needs attention.

A useful audit report separates findings into three groups: safety issues that need action now, reliability risks that should be scheduled, and observations to watch. It includes photographs. It also tells you where your documentation is missing, which is usually the first thing to fix.

What a Good Programme Covers

Thermal imaging. An infrared camera shows loose connections, overloaded circuits and failing components as hot spots, long before they fail. It is non-contact and is done with the plant running, because the equipment must be under load for a problem to show. For many plants an annual survey of every switchboard and motor control centre, timed a few months before the shutdown, gives the best return of any electrical maintenance task.

Switchboards and motor control centres. With the power off: cleaning, checking terminations for tightness, inspecting contactors and breakers for wear and heat damage, checking door seals and verifying that labels match the drawings.

Motors. Insulation resistance testing to track winding condition over time, current measurement on each phase, and a look at terminal boxes for moisture. A falling insulation reading is a clear early warning.

Variable speed drives. Cleaning or replacing filters, checking cooling fans, confirming enclosure temperatures and backing up parameters. Heat is what kills drives, and blocked filters are the usual cause.

Control systems. PLC and HMI backups taken and verified, memory backup batteries replaced on schedule, control power supplies checked and panel cooling confirmed.

Safety systems. Functional tests of emergency stops, guard interlocks and light curtains, with the results recorded.

Standby and emergency systems. Uninterruptible power supplies and their batteries, emergency and exit lighting, and any standby generator.

Field wiring. Cables that flex, glands in wet areas and junction boxes exposed to washdown. In food and beverage plants, water ingress is behind a large share of electrical faults.

Setting the Frequencies

Apart from the regulated intervals, there is no single correct frequency. Set it by criticality and environment. A drive on the main filler in a warm, wet area warrants monthly attention to its filters. A distribution board in a dry store may need a look once a year.

A practical structure has four tiers. Short operator level checks done weekly, such as looking for damaged leads and blocked panel vents. Monthly or quarterly tasks done by an electrician during planned maintenance stops. Annual tasks such as thermal imaging and motor testing. And invasive work on switchboards, which needs the power off and belongs in the shutdown.

Review the frequencies after a year. If a task never finds anything, do it less often. If it finds something every time, do it more often or fix the underlying cause.

Working Around Production

Electrical maintenance has a constraint that mechanical maintenance does not share. In Queensland, electrical work on or near energised equipment is generally prohibited, so most hands-on work inside a panel needs that panel isolated. That means maintenance has to be planned into stops: changeovers, weekly maintenance windows and the annual shutdown.

The answer is to sort tasks by what they need. Thermal imaging and visual inspections can be done while running. Tasks on one machine fit into that machine’s planned stops. Switchboard work that affects a whole area is grouped for the shutdown, where the electrical scope should be agreed weeks ahead so that parts are on hand and isolations are planned.

Records That Earn Their Keep

A maintenance programme without records is a series of unconnected visits. Keep the test and tag register, safety switch test results, thermal images from each survey so that changes can be compared, motor insulation readings as a trend, backup dates and a log of every fault with its cause.

These records satisfy auditors and insurers. More usefully, they show which assets are deteriorating and justify replacing them before they fail.

Is It Worth the Cost

The comparison is simple to make for your own plant. Take the cost of one hour of lost production on your main line and multiply it by the hours lost to electrical faults last year. Then compare that with the cost of a thermal survey, a few planned maintenance days and a shutdown scope. In most plants the programme pays for itself by preventing a single serious failure.

Electrical Maintenance From BevTech

BevTech is a family owned engineering business in Richlands, Brisbane, with more than 25 years in beverage and FMCG manufacturing. Our industrial electricians provide preventative maintenance and repairs aligned with production schedules, condition audits of equipment and sites that find problems before they cause downtime, and planning and crews for annual shutdowns. We work on Allen Bradley and Siemens systems across Brisbane and South East Queensland, with 24/7 breakdown support for the faults that still get through.

If you would like an electrical audit as the starting point for a maintenance programme, use the contact form at bevtech.com.au/contact.

The test intervals in this article are those published by the Electrical Safety Office for manufacturing work, current as at October 2026. Confirm the requirements that apply to your own workplace before relying on them.

October 6, 2026
Emergency Electrician for a Brisbane Factory: The First Hour of an Electrical Failure

When the Power Goes Wrong on a Production Floor

An electrical emergency in a factory is different from one in an office or a home. There is product in tanks and on lines, refrigeration that cannot stay off for long, cleaning cycles part way through and machinery that may not be safe to restart without checks. The decisions made in the first hour largely determine whether the event costs a few hours or a few days.

This guide is for plant and shift managers in Brisbane and South East Queensland. It covers what to do first, how to get the right emergency electrician moving quickly, what the law requires you to report and how to prepare so that the next event is shorter.

First: People

If anyone has received an electric shock, or may still be in contact with a live part, do not touch them. Isolate the supply if you can do so safely, call triple zero and begin first aid once the person is clear of the electrical source. Anyone who has received a shock should be medically assessed even if they feel well, because effects can be delayed.

If there is fire, smoke or a burning smell from electrical equipment, evacuate the area and call triple zero. Do not use water on electrical equipment.

Keep people away from the affected equipment. Do not open switchboard doors to look. A fault inside a switchboard can release a great deal of energy, and an unqualified person in front of an open panel is in the worst possible place.

Second: Work Out What Has Actually Failed

From a safe distance, establish the extent of the problem. The answer directs everything that follows.

The whole site is off. Check whether neighbouring premises have power. If they do not, the fault is probably on the network and the call is to your electricity distributor, which in South East Queensland is Energex. If neighbours have power, the problem is likely your own main switch or incoming equipment.

Part of the site is off. A section of the plant or a group of machines without power points to a tripped breaker or blown fuse on a sub main or distribution board.

One machine is off. This is a machine fault and the most common case.

Things are behaving strangely. Motors humming and not starting, lights dim in one area or equipment running hot suggests a lost phase. Stop affected motors, because a motor running on two phases can burn out quickly.

Third: Do Not Keep Resetting

A circuit breaker that trips has done its job. It is protecting cable and equipment from damage. Resetting it once, after a visual check for anything obvious, is reasonable. Resetting it repeatedly is not. Each attempt closes the supply onto a fault, and each one can do more damage to the equipment and to the breaker itself.

If it trips again, leave it off and call an electrician. The same applies to drives and overloads that keep tripping.

Fourth: Protect the Product

While help is on the way, the production team can limit the loss. The priorities in a beverage or food plant are usually these.

Refrigeration and temperature control. Find out how long tanks and cold rooms can hold temperature. Keep doors shut. If glycol or refrigeration plant is down, this becomes the clock that matters.

Cleaning cycles. A CIP cycle interrupted part way through may have left chemical in the line. Make sure nobody restarts production on that circuit until it has been checked and the cycle completed.

Product in process. Decide what on the line can be recovered and what must be held for quality review.

Controlled restart. When power returns, do not let everything start at once. Bring equipment up in sequence so that the starting load is spread and so that each machine is checked as it comes back.

Fifth: Make the Call Count

An emergency electrician can prepare on the way if you give them the right information. Have the following ready.

Which area and which machine is affected. What was happening when it failed. Any alarm messages or fault codes, exactly as displayed. Whether a breaker has tripped and which one. What has been tried already. Whether anyone was hurt. The control platform on the machine, such as Allen Bradley or Siemens. Who will meet them at the gate and what induction they need.

Send someone to find the electrical drawings for the affected equipment and the latest software backup. Having them on a bench when the electrician arrives can save an hour.

What You May Be Required to Report

Some electrical events must be notified to Queensland’s Electrical Safety Office by the business concerned. The Electrical Safety Act 2002 defines two categories.

A serious electrical incident includes a person being killed by electricity, a person receiving a shock or injury from electricity that is treated by or under the supervision of a doctor, and a person receiving a shock or injury from electricity at high voltage whether or not treatment is given.

A dangerous electrical event includes significant property damage caused by electricity or by a fire originating from electricity, as well as unlicensed or unsafe electrical work.

Where a death is involved, notification must be immediate. In other cases notify promptly by phone and follow up with the written incident notification form. Keep your records of the incident for at least five years.

There is a second obligation that is easy to breach under pressure. It is unlawful to interfere with the scene of a notifiable incident without the permission of an inspector or a police officer, except where that is necessary to save life, relieve suffering or prevent injury or property damage. Make the area safe, then leave it as it is until you have been told you can proceed. Repairs to get production going do not come first.

After the Power Is Back

Getting running again is not the end of the job. Ask the electrician what failed and why, and get the answer in writing. A breaker that tripped because a motor failed is a different matter from one that tripped because the switchboard is overloaded. If the cause was not found, treat the event as unfinished and schedule a proper investigation.

Then record it: time, extent, cause, what was done and how long each stage took. The stages that took longest are the ones to fix before next time.

Preparing Before It Happens

Plants that recover quickly have usually done a few simple things in advance.

A current single line diagram of the site, displayed in the main switch room and held in the maintenance office. Switchboards and breakers labelled to show what they feed. An emergency contact list with the distributor’s fault line and your electrical provider’s after hours number, posted where the night shift can see it. Drawings and software backups stored where they can be found without the day shift. Critical spares identified and on the shelf. A restart sequence written down. And an agreed arrangement with an industrial electrician who already knows the site, so that the first call is not also the first introduction.

Emergency Electrical Support From BevTech

BevTech is a family owned engineering business in Richlands, Brisbane, with more than 25 years in beverage and FMCG manufacturing. Our industrial electricians provide 24/7 breakdown support and shift coverage across Brisbane and South East Queensland, with fast, methodical diagnosis of electrical and control faults on Allen Bradley and Siemens systems. Our mechanical trades and machine shop are part of the same business, so a failure that turns out to need a part made is still handled by one team.

The best time to set up emergency cover is before you need it. To talk through an arrangement for your plant, use the contact form at bevtech.com.au/contact.

This article is a general guide current as at October 2026 and is not a substitute for your site emergency procedures. In a life threatening emergency call triple zero.

October 6, 2026
Predictive Maintenance and IoT Sensors on Ageing Production Lines

Beyond Preventative Maintenance

Preventative maintenance, servicing equipment on a fixed schedule regardless of its actual condition, has long been the standard approach to avoiding unplanned breakdowns in FMCG manufacturing. Predictive maintenance takes this further, using sensor data and condition monitoring to identify developing faults before they cause a failure, allowing maintenance to be scheduled based on actual equipment condition rather than a generic time interval. For manufacturers running ageing production lines, where original equipment may be well past its designed service life but remains too costly to replace wholesale, predictive maintenance and the low cost sensor technology now available to support it represent a genuinely practical opportunity to reduce unplanned downtime.

Why Ageing Equipment Benefits Most

Predictive maintenance delivers the greatest value where failure risk is least predictable, and this is precisely the situation on ageing production equipment. A new machine, still within its original design life and maintained to specification, tends to fail in relatively predictable ways, making scheduled preventative maintenance reasonably effective. Equipment that has been in service for fifteen or twenty years, however, behaves less predictably. Bearings wear unevenly, motors draw increasing current as insulation degrades, and mechanical components develop faults that a fixed maintenance schedule was never designed to anticipate.

For manufacturers who cannot justify the capital cost of wholesale equipment replacement, and who are instead managing a mixed fleet of ageing and newer equipment, predictive maintenance offers a way to extend the useful life of older assets more safely, by giving genuine visibility into their actual condition rather than relying on generic maintenance intervals that may be too conservative in some cases and insufficient in others.

What IoT Sensor Technology Actually Involves

The technology underpinning modern predictive maintenance has become significantly more accessible in recent years. Low cost vibration sensors can be retrofitted to motors, pumps, and gearboxes to detect the early signs of bearing wear or misalignment, well before a fault becomes audible or produces a measurable temperature increase. Current sensors monitoring motor draw can flag developing electrical faults or increasing mechanical load. Temperature sensors on bearings, drives, and electrical cabinets provide early warning of overheating that often precedes failure.

Critically, this sensor data does not need to feed into an expensive, bespoke monitoring platform to be useful. Many modern industrial sensors can integrate directly with existing PLC infrastructure, feeding condition data into the same Allen Bradley or Siemens control systems already managing the production line, with alarms and trend data made visible through existing HMI screens rather than requiring an entirely separate monitoring system.

Retrofitting Sensors to Existing Control Systems

For manufacturers with existing Allen Bradley or Siemens PLC infrastructure, retrofitting condition monitoring sensors is often a more incremental and cost effective step than it initially appears. Rather than replacing an entire control system, sensors can frequently be integrated into spare input capacity on an existing PLC, or connected via a small additional input module, with new logic added to log trend data and raise alarms based on defined thresholds. This approach allows manufacturers to add predictive maintenance capability progressively, starting with the highest risk or highest consequence equipment, such as refrigeration compressors or critical line drive motors, rather than requiring a large upfront investment across the entire facility.

Building the Business Case

The business case for predictive maintenance rests on comparing the cost of sensor installation and monitoring against the cost of the unplanned downtime it prevents. For a critical piece of equipment, such as a refrigeration compressor supporting beer tank temperature control, or a drive motor on a bottling line’s primary conveyor, a single unplanned failure during a production shift can cost far more in lost production than several years of sensor monitoring on that equipment. This calculation becomes even more compelling when equipment failure carries downstream consequences, such as product spoilage from a refrigeration failure, or contamination risk from a failed hygiene critical system.

A realistic business case does not attempt to instrument every piece of equipment on a site simultaneously. It identifies the highest risk, highest consequence assets first, typically equipment that is both critical to production continuity and showing signs of age related unpredictability, and builds monitoring capability out from there based on demonstrated value.

Interpreting the Data: Where Experience Still Matters

Sensor data alone does not prevent breakdowns, it provides the information needed for an experienced engineer to make a maintenance decision. Distinguishing a genuine developing fault from normal equipment variation requires understanding of the specific equipment and process involved, and this is where the combination of sensor technology and genuine engineering experience becomes valuable. A vibration trend that would be alarming on one piece of equipment might be entirely normal on another, depending on its design, age, and duty cycle, and interpreting this correctly requires more than simply setting a generic alarm threshold.

Common Mistakes When Getting Started

Manufacturers new to predictive maintenance sometimes attempt to instrument too much equipment at once, purchasing sensors broadly across a facility without a clear plan for how the resulting data will actually be reviewed and acted upon. This tends to produce a large volume of trend data that nobody has the time or clear responsibility to properly monitor, undermining the value of the investment. A more effective approach starts narrow, with a small number of genuinely critical assets, and builds out review processes and alarm thresholds that are actually being used before expanding further.

Another common mistake is setting generic alarm thresholds without adjusting them to the specific equipment and its normal operating variation, leading either to alarm fatigue from excessive false positives, or missed genuine faults because thresholds were set too conservatively. Getting this right typically requires an initial period of baseline data collection on each piece of monitored equipment, understanding what normal variation actually looks like, before finalising alarm settings that will be genuinely useful rather than noise. Working with an engineering partner who already understands the specific equipment involved shortens this baselining period considerably, since prior experience with similar assets provides a reasonable starting point rather than beginning entirely from scratch.

A Practical Path Forward

For FMCG manufacturers running a mix of ageing and newer production equipment, predictive maintenance does not need to be an all or nothing, large capital investment. Starting with targeted sensor installation on the highest risk equipment, integrated into existing Allen Bradley or Siemens PLC infrastructure, offers a practical, incremental path toward better visibility of equipment condition and fewer unplanned breakdowns. BevTech’s combined electrical, automation, and mechanical engineering capability means this kind of project can be scoped and delivered as a single, coordinated piece of work, from sensor selection and installation through to control system integration and alarm logic. To discuss predictive maintenance options for your production equipment, contact BevTech at 25 Silvio St, Richlands QLD 4077, or admin@bevtech.com.au.

July 15, 2026
The Real Cost of Unplanned Breakdowns in FMCG Manufacturing

When an unplanned breakdown stops a production line, the first number most procurement and finance teams see is the repair invoice. It is also, almost always, the smallest number in the true cost of that breakdown. For FMCG manufacturers operating on tight production schedules and contractual delivery commitments, the real cost of unplanned downtime extends well beyond the technician’s callout fee and parts cost into a category of losses that are harder to see but considerably larger in total.

The repair invoice is the smallest piece

A breakdown repair invoice typically reflects labour hours and parts cost for the specific fix. What it does not reflect is the lost production during the stoppage, the idle labour cost of operators and packaging staff standing by while the line is down, the premium rate frequently charged for emergency callout response outside standard business hours, and the knock on disruption to the production schedule for the rest of the shift or day. A two hour electrical fault on a filling line does not just cost two hours of lost output, it can also delay the changeover scheduled immediately afterward, push despatch loading later than planned, and in some cases require overtime labour to recover the lost production before a despatch deadline.

Contractual and customer relationship exposure

FMCG manufacturers supplying major retail chains or beverage brand customers frequently operate under delivery commitments with real contractual consequences for missed despatch windows. A breakdown that delays a production run by even half a day can cascade into a missed delivery slot, which in some retail supply relationships carries financial penalties and in all cases carries reputational cost with a customer who has their own downstream commitments depending on reliable supply. This category of cost rarely appears on an internal maintenance cost report at all, since it shows up as a customer service issue or a sales team escalation rather than a maintenance line item, which makes it easy to systematically underweight when building the business case for maintenance investment.

The hidden premium of reactive maintenance

Beyond the direct cost of any single breakdown, a plant that operates primarily in reactive mode, fixing things only after they fail, pays a structural premium compared to a plant running a genuine preventative maintenance programme. Emergency callout rates for after hours electrical and mechanical support are typically higher than standard or scheduled maintenance rates. Reactive repairs are also more likely to involve a degree of guesswork or temporary fix under time pressure, increasing the likelihood of a repeat failure and a second round of breakdown cost for an issue that a planned, unhurried repair would have resolved properly the first time.

Quality and compliance risk during breakdowns

For beverage and food manufacturers specifically, certain breakdowns carry quality and compliance risk that compounds the financial cost further. A refrigeration control fault affecting temperature regulated product storage, or a CIP system failure that leaves cleaning standards unverified, can put product quality and food safety compliance at risk in ways that extend well beyond the immediate production line stoppage, potentially affecting product already in the supply chain and triggering a far more serious and costly response than a standard mechanical breakdown would.

Building an accurate cost picture

For procurement and operations teams looking to build an accurate breakdown cost figure to inform maintenance investment decisions, a useful approach is to track, over a representative period, the direct repair cost, the estimated lost production value based on line speed and contribution margin, idle labour cost during the stoppage, any despatch delay or customer service consequence, and any quality or compliance follow up cost where relevant. Summing these across a year of breakdown history typically reveals a total cost several multiples higher than the direct repair invoice total alone, which provides a much more compelling and accurate basis for evaluating investment in preventative maintenance, retained electrical coverage, or control system upgrades aimed at reducing breakdown frequency.

Shifting the cost curve

The practical response to this cost picture is not simply spending more on maintenance in general, but shifting spend deliberately from reactive, emergency response toward planned preventative maintenance, proactive electrical and mechanical audits, and where ageing control systems are a recurring fault source, targeted upgrades that address root causes rather than repeatedly patching symptoms. This shift typically reduces total maintenance and downtime cost even as planned maintenance spend increases, because the avoided breakdown cost, including its full hidden cost structure, outweighs the additional planned maintenance investment.

A partner focused on reducing total breakdown cost

Bevtech Engineering and Automation supports food and beverage manufacturers with electrical and mechanical breakdown response, preventative maintenance programmes, and proactive equipment audits aimed at reducing the frequency and severity of unplanned downtime, drawing on over 25 years of FMCG specific experience. To build an accurate picture of your facility’s true breakdown cost and discuss a maintenance strategy to reduce it, contact Bevtech on +61 400 881 321 or admin@bevtech.com.au, or visit 25 Silvio St, Richlands QLD.

June 20, 2026
Preventative Maintenance Programs: Building a Business Case for Plant Managers

Almost every plant manager agrees, in principle, that preventative maintenance is preferable to reactive repair. Yet preventative maintenance programmes are frequently the first budget line trimmed when cost pressure increases, precisely because the value of preventative work is harder to demonstrate than the cost of performing it. A maintenance technician’s time spent on a scheduled inspection has an obvious, immediate cost. The breakdown that inspection prevented has no invoice attached to it, since it never happened, which makes preventative maintenance a perpetually difficult sell against budget pressure unless the business case is built deliberately and presented in terms that finance and procurement stakeholders find credible.

Why the default business case often fails

Plant managers advocating for preventative maintenance investment often default to a general argument about reliability and best practice, which, while true, does not give a finance stakeholder a number to evaluate against the cost of the programme. A more effective business case quantifies the avoided cost directly, drawing on the plant’s own breakdown history rather than industry generalities, since a specific, site grounded figure is far more persuasive than an abstract claim about the value of maintenance in general.

Structuring the avoided cost calculation

The core of a credible preventative maintenance business case is a comparison between the historical cost of reactive breakdowns on a specific piece of equipment or production line, and the estimated cost of a structured preventative programme designed to substantially reduce that breakdown frequency. This requires tracking, for the equipment in question, the frequency and direct cost of past breakdowns, the associated downtime and lost production value, and any pattern in failure cause that a preventative programme could realistically address, since not every failure mode is preventable through scheduled maintenance, some genuinely require redesign or replacement instead.

Once this baseline is established, the preventative programme can be scoped specifically against it, targeting the failure modes most amenable to scheduled intervention, rather than proposing a generic, broad based maintenance schedule that may not address the plant’s actual highest cost failure patterns.

What a well scoped programme includes

An effective preventative maintenance programme for FMCG production equipment typically combines several elements. Scheduled mechanical inspection and servicing based on manufacturer recommendations and the plant’s own failure history, rather than a generic interval applied uniformly across all equipment regardless of actual duty cycle or criticality. Proactive electrical audits, checking for developing issues such as loose terminations, component degradation, or control system anomalies before they cause a fault, which is particularly valuable given that electrical faults are frequently among the harder failure modes to predict through purely mechanical inspection alone. Lubrication and wear component replacement on a planned schedule rather than waiting for failure, since planned replacement of a wear component during a scheduled stoppage is dramatically cheaper than the consequential cost of that component failing mid production. And condition monitoring where practical, using vibration, temperature, or control system data trends to flag developing issues between scheduled inspections.

Prioritising critical assets first

Not every piece of equipment warrants the same intensity of preventative maintenance investment. A useful prioritisation approach ranks equipment by the combination of breakdown likelihood and consequence severity, equipment that is both prone to failure and whose failure causes significant production or quality impact should receive the most intensive preventative attention, while equipment with low failure consequence, perhaps because of redundancy or low criticality to the overall line, can reasonably operate on a lighter maintenance schedule or even a run to failure strategy in some cases. This prioritisation makes the preventative maintenance budget go further by concentrating resourcing where the avoided cost return is highest.

Presenting the business case

When presenting a preventative maintenance investment proposal, the most persuasive structure leads with the historical breakdown cost for the targeted equipment or line, including the full cost picture of lost production, premium labour, and any downstream despatch or customer impact, followed by the proposed preventative programme cost, and finally the expected reduction in breakdown frequency based on the specific failure modes being addressed. This framing positions the preventative investment as a cost reduction measure rather than simply additional spend, which is a far easier proposition for finance and procurement stakeholders to approve.

Support building and delivering the programme

Bevtech Engineering and Automation provides preventative maintenance services for food and beverage manufacturers, including scheduled mechanical and electrical maintenance, proactive audits, and condition based monitoring, and can work with plant managers to build a site specific business case grounded in actual breakdown history rather than generic industry assumptions. To discuss developing or refining a preventative maintenance programme for your facility, contact Bevtech on +61 400 881 321 or admin@bevtech.com.au, or visit 25 Silvio St, Richlands QLD.

June 20, 2026

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