6 Tasks lead to Good Undercarriage Management

Performing 6 tasks will lead to long term costs savings and increased competitiveness in the market

The reason to perform these tasks is that Undercarriage components undergo extra machining and surface hardening in order to have the necessary wear resistance. This costs more and thus undercarriage maintenance costs will be greater than 50% of the owning and operating costs over the life of the machine. The 6 tasks are

1. Component Selection: – starting off with the correct set of components matched to the environment and the application of the machine ensures reasonable results can be achieved.
2. Undercarriage Inspections: – Inspections must be carried out regularly on Undercarriage components and frame components and should identify any signs of accelerated wear along with the normal % worn and residual life calculations. Results of inspections should be driving maintenance tasks
3. Midlife Maintenance: – Midlife maintenance includes tasks where components are shifted or repaired so that the undercarriage system as a whole is more balanced with the wear profile.
4. Inventory management: -Inventory is the inspection and management of both new and refurbished undercarriage components as well as the un-refurbished components removed from machines (Undercarriage Frames, Chains and Idlers). Managing inventory allows machines to be down for undercarriage maintenance for shorter periods of time as refurbished components are swapped onto the machine for the used components being removed for repairs.
5. End of Life stretching and Replacement: – this is a critical piece of the puzzle including forecasting when is best to remove the components and achieving maximum stretched life. Recording the hours on the component and % of wear at removal of all the components allows and full picture to be created of the undercarriage set of components performance. This data is used to create the site benchmarks.
6. Measuring performance against benchmarks: – the final step is to review performance of each undercarriage component set against the sites benchmarks to see how well the set has been managed and the overall cost per hour achieved.

These 6 tasks improve overall undercarriage management, ensuring that undercarriage components are managed effectively, leading to significant cost savings through reduced repairs, extended component life, and minimized downtime. Additionally, these practices enhance your competitive position by improving machine reliability and operational efficiency.