Your engineering costs have risen steadily over the years, and you wonder if you are getting the best deal possible. Maybe you feel that the price of an engineer visit is too high, and would like to explore other options. Or have you used your current service provider for many years, but feel that it may be time to shop around for a better deal?

Well, I hope this article goes someway in to answering these questions.

The cost of an engineer visit is becoming a significant part of your annual budget

Service engineer visit costs can be a significant part of your annual budget.

For example, a single CNC machine tool on average will cost around £1500 per year in service engineer charges. This may seem insignificant compared to the overall cost of owning and operating your machine tool, but as more equipment is purchased, this cost will rise rapidly.

If your company has three CNC machines for example then engineer visit costs could easily be £4500 per year! As more machines are added to your plant then this figure grows even more rapidly. I have customers with over 100 machines, that’s potentially £150k on service engineer expenses every year.

If your plant list mainly consists of older machinery these costs will be signifcantly more, often £4000 – £5000 per year on just a single machine’s service and breakdown costs.

So, are you spending to much to have your machines repaired and serviced?

Finding a healthy balance between cost and quality of service can be a tricky task in any field of service. The cheapest is rarely the most cost effective solution and the most expensive isn’t always justified by the quality of work delivered. So, what to do?

More often than not engineering companies will turn to the machine tool manufacturer or agent to supply the breakdown and repair service. The most common reason for this is the assumption that they will provide the best service. In some cases this maybe true, paticularly those machine tool manufacturers that keep a closed lid on access to parts and technical information. But in most cases, this is not the case. In fact, very often the service offered by machine tool manufactuers can be very slow to respond due to their priorities. After all, a customer who frequently purchases machines from them will have much higher priority of service over a company who hasn’t bought a new machine in 10 years.

This is just the inevitable reality of how things work.

However, independent Machine Tool Service providers don’t have this priority issue. Their entire business is built around service, not machine sales.

Independant Machine Tool Service providers are also typically far cheaper than their machine tool supplier competitors. Often as much as 50% cheaper.

Many machine tool suppliers are now charging in excess of £100 per hour, plus call out charges. Independent service providers however typically charge much less, up to 50% less!

Is Your Engineer Fixing the Problem, or just prolonging the need for a solution?

Do you ever feel like you get the same problem over and over again on your machine?

It is all good and well when the engineer comes in and gets the machine back up and running within a few hours, but if the problem returns a week or month later then maybe it’s not so good after all.

It is very tempting to ‘bodge’ a temporary fix, simply to get the machine back up and running. But it is so important that the underlying cause of the issue is resolved. Otherwise over time, what seemed like a quick and cheap visit once a month to load your parameters back in, or reset the toolchange library, or reset the turret alignments ect. can turn into a costly annual expense.

So, be sure that the underlying cause of a problem is being tackled. In the long-run it will save you money.

Planned Preventitive Maintenance

To help reduce breakdown call outs, arranging a planned preventitive maintenance plan for your plant list is highly recommended. But, be careful. These can often be severely over priced.

But having an engineer spend a day once a year to give your machine a once over, note any arising potential issues, clean slideways, ballscrews, bearings, belts, regrease and lubricate all necessary parts, clear and clean cooling systems, check drives, motors and control units for potential issues – and so on, having this done will save you money.

Because a breakdown is far more expensive than just the service engineer bill. Often the downtime costs far outweigh the engineer charges. With a good quality PPM in place, many of these breakdowns can be avoided altogether.

Have you considered a service contract?

The most common way to pay for CNC Machine Tool breakdowns and repairs is by the hour. The engineer visits, once the job is complete the hours are logged, invoiced and you pay the bill. However, for some companies a service contract might be more suited.

How does a service contract work?

An engineer will need to visit initially to do an assessment on your plant list. Then a fixed monthly/annual price will be offered which will cover the cost of breakdowns and repairs for your entire plantlist (exclusing parts and usually with limitations on hours included per month/year).

Service contracts allows for easier budgeting of breakdown expenses. A fixed monthly fee with peace of mind.

Service contracts are not necessarily for everyone, but paticularly for larger companies they can be beneficial in many ways.

So….

Hopefully, this article has helped you to make some decisions about what is important when choosing a service provider. Using the tips in this post, you should feel more confident about finding one that suits your needs and budget. As well as how to potentially reduce breakdowns by organizing some form of planned preventitive maintenance for your machinery.

Remember, the most costly isn’t necessarily the best and the cheapest is rarely going to be the cheapest (in the long run).