Think Profits

How To Increase Reliability & Profits in a Stagnant Economy

Which is the best way to increase profits?

Should you first focus on;

1. Increasing your sales? or
2. Reducing your costs?

The table below will help you answer:

1. What is your net profit percentage?
2. What increase in sales is needed to increase profits by $10,000?
3. What amount of cost reduction is required to increase profits by $10,000?

% Net Profit from Sales	Required Sales Increase	Required Cost Reduction
15% 12% 10% 8% 6% 5% 4% 3% 2% 1%	$66,667 $83,333 $100,000 $125,000 $166,667 $200,000 $250,000 $333,333 $500,000 $1,000,000	$10,000 $10,000 $10,000 $10,000 $10,000 $10,000 $10,000 $10,000 $10,000 $10,000

Of course when the economy is growing or your market niche is growing, every company wants to expand sales and market share. But, what is the most immediate and long lasting way to increase annual profits? Reduce costs?

Amemco will help you sharply increase profits and uptime by eliminating 70% – 92% of your unscheduled equipment downtime and related overhead – within 30 days! A side benefit is that our process hardens your systems against terrorists attack, heat, lightning, power surges, as well as other catastrophic events and chronic stresses. The process readies your new and old equipment for true Lean Manufacturing capability and Six Sigma reliability, uptime and increased profits.

Why have Amemco help maximize uptime?

Because, Amemco has over 25 years of experience in minimizing costs by maximizing equipment and systems uptime for medium and large companies like yours, nation wide. This expertise is needed for just a few weeks to turn things around and put you on a permanent course of increased profits with improved equipment uptime and productivity. If you had people with this same level of expertise, they should have made these improvements already. If they haven’t done it already, it is usually because they won’t or they don’t know how. Being an outside consulting firm, Amemco sees no advantage or reason for frequent malfunctions, failures and downtime. Our mission purpose is to eliminate downtime and increase client profits.

Your ROI for Engaging Amemco?

This is a simple calculation. Just subtract our consulting fee and the cost to install the resulting recommendations from the profits reaped by increasing uptime, productivity and eliminated downtime. To complete this calculation you simply need to get a good handle on your “cost of downtime”:

Total Cost of Downtime = Repair parts & labor + Scrap & Error Costs + (Hours of DT x Hourly cost of $Downtime)

Compare or average this with the cost of Outsourcing:

Hourly cost of $Downtime = Cost of outsourcing (the hourly shop rate) – less 10%

Calculate your Savings (increased profits) by looking at the difference between your current Total Cost of Downtime or Average $DT above and the reduced downtime costs enjoyed by other Amemco clients:

• 50% reduced machine tool downtime
• 80% reduced hydraulic systems repair costs & downtime
• 92% reduced D.T. on electronic, computer, automation, telecom systems, etc.

If you had done this two years ago, what would your profits have been by now?

Stop to Calculate here:

Downtime – Your #1 Overhead Expense

Commonly maintenance downtime is the companies largest overhead expense. Yet maintenance costs are just a fraction of the associated downtime losses. Both maintenance costs and downtime losses can be shifted to your bottom line profits, when equipment reliability and uptime are maximized.

What is it Amemco really does to boost uptime?

1. We first talk with you by phone to assess your potential savings and need.(no charge – just call: 801-859-2073)
2. If needed, we then conduct a survey of your facility & equipment to analyze needs and prescribe solutions.The first 3 hours in your facility we hold a seminar to orient your management and technical personnel. Sharing expertise with your people and listening to them helps maximize the benefit of the survey to create a more immediate jump in your profits.
3. We then produce a written report detailing system by system, machine by machine, what must be done to minimize unscheduled malfunctions, failures, scrap, re-work, and downtime by as much as 92%.
4. We then guide you through implementation,
5. Act as technical support till project completion, then help measure and report your improvements.
6. Retain Amemco for 30 days. It doesn’t cost, it pays.

E-mail us to request Amemco’s Free seven (7) page report:

• “How To Eliminate 92% of Your Unscheduled Equipment Donwtime – within 30 Days!” or

• “Lean Maintenance via Six Sigma DMAIC”

Six Sigma Keys to Lean Maintenance Reliability

I have written various articles on FISHing (Field Implemented Stress Hardening) and for Six Sigma DFR engineers, articles on “FISH DMAIC” (First Integration of Stress Hardening). My website also addresses this powerful methodology for maximizing equipment reliabilty. But, continued questions in my seminars and from my website (at: www.amemco.net), have encouraged me to start this blog on lean maintenance reliability and FISHing so that others my find a ready source for these commonly asked questions and answers.

Questions such as what is FISH DMAIC or FISHing and how does it fit into the Six Sigma tool set for quickly and effectively maximizing equipment uptime, reliability, availability and this profits. Why is FISHing needed when we already have FTA, FMEA, HALT/HAST, Reliability Growth tracking, etc.? Does FISHing replace or augment these powerful methodologies? No.

However, FISH DMAIC fills a critical gap in the DFR Reliability Engineering Methodology and FISHing provides possibly the only opportunity to increase reliability on IB (install base) equipment now deployed by the thousands into the market place. I acknowledge to opportunity of going back on the IB and conducting FMEA and/or PofF to press for re-design, but this rarely happens. Even when they are being utilized, FISHing will greatly reduce the need for such redesign.

Why? Because FISHing is the exact 180 degree complement, counter-part complement to HALT. Highly Accelerated Life Testing presses or percipitates, by increased stressing during the design phase, weak components or “weak links” in the desing so that they can be corrected before building 2,000 or 100,000 units for market distribution. HALT is probably the most productive thing that can be done in the design phase to increase reliability when done properly (well discuss this further on). But, HALT allows for finding the weak points and correcting with a more rubust design. The opposite of that, and equally productive in increasing reliabilty, is FISH. By Stress Hardening the component, sub-system, or system, we find MTBF stretching way out, by orders of magnitude because the “normal stresses” can no longer get to the system to do their havac.

Therefore, once a system or piece of equipment is put into production and thousands are out in the field, FISHing is a most effective way to identify the actual “real world” environment and the root cause stresses effecting shorter than expected MTBF and ways (usually simple and easy to install ways) can be identified to protect the unit or system from those root cause stresses. Thus to the new “protected environment” the design acts as “more robust” overall and greatly improved MTBF is observed. For example, why would electronic devices ever fail or malfunction if not stresses by over current, heat, vibration, dirt build-up, oxidation, corrosion, power surges or lightning storm transients. FISHing as an evaluation in the field, sees these stresses for what they actually are, in the field, and provides effective ways to eliminate or protect any given system from those stresses. Thus, maximized uptime, reliability, life, availability and productivity.

Enough for now. I’ve got to go to bed. Leave your comments or questions and I’ll try to answer.