Service and Maintenance: The Keys to Forklift Efficiency - Catalog - Page 9
2
The Integral Role of
Quality Forklift Parts
SMART CHOICES SAVE MONEY
While a thorough and consistent planned
maintenance program will help establish efficient
and on-time repairs, it is only part of the equation
for optimizing fleet performance. The benefits
of planned maintenance can be unintentionally
offset by inferior parts that wear quickly or
fail more frequently, resulting in unexpected
downtime. So, even when service experiences
are positive and useful, they can become too
much of a good thing when repetitive parts
failures occur.
It’s best to consider your forklift parts’ long-term
return on investment in the same way that you
would evaluate the forklifts themselves. For most
managers, reliability and durability are considered
a “must have” when selecting their forklift fleet.
However, the same scrutiny is not always applied
when choosing replacement parts. The result? With
every repair, inferior replacement parts chip away at
the efficiency and performance originally designed
into the equipment by the forklift OEM. After all,
they’ve chosen the original parts for a reason.
FOCUS ON QUALITY
Sometimes, even the smallest part failure can
render a forklift inoperable. In fact, any part
failure can have a negative effect on multiple
aspects of your operation, mainly:
One of the keys to ensuring increased uptime
is choosing quality replacement parts designed
for durability and reliability. Just like a builder
chooses strong and reliable construction
materials, the components of your forklift make
all the difference. Choosing inferior replacement
parts may reduce the immediate cost of a repair
but can end up costing far more in the long run
– to the tune of hundreds or even thousands
of dollars in lost productivity – if the parts
negatively affect performance or if they tend to
fail more frequently.
Safety
Cost
Productivity
An unexpected part failure creates a domino
effect of backlogs that are more than just minor
hassles. While a forklift is offline, the clock is still
ticking. Work is piling up. Operators are still on
the clock. Deadlines can be missed. Throughput
declines. That’s when the true cost of inferior
parts kick in like a one-two punch – work isn’t
getting done and the labor expense continues.
7
