Good Industrial Troubeshooting Articles

[CJones]

On a diffrent scale, I take the better two guys on the shift and put parts on a board (timers starters inverters) and I make them go in the plant and make a simple drawing of how it's wired inside, then in the shop wire it there by color and explain it to them.

Then I make those two guys take two more and repeat the same steps, I then stand there with all four.

Every so often I will call one and tell them to get some parts and "wire it up" and do it all over again.

usually the best part is to let one guy sabatoge the project and let the rest fix it.

Works here OK, but kinda simplistic

Clint

 

[Arlie]

That is how I learned alot of different types of systems, hydralics, pnumatics, controls etc.

works well if done right.

 

[David_Emmerich]

Hi group,
Many years ago, when I worked for a large glass plant, we didn't have the option of "downtime"....the glass was going to keep coming at you no matter what happened, you just HAD to get that problem fixed asap.
We used a system that stressed knowing the sequence of operation for EVER machine...we would walk every new tech thru ever step of how a machine operated, and they had to write down in a notebook all the steps...what LS had to be made for the head to come down, etc. It took a lot of time, but you did learn the machines inside out. It was also a way to teach them to think and function logicly...and not get flustered and jump in and do that big sin of becomming a parts swapper. { Also known as easter egging...}
What we were really doing was making them all write their own trouble shooting manual, in their own handwriting, that they could refer to if they had to. They had to keep that notebook in their tool locker to refer to when they had to. It really was a way for them to pay attention to what had NOT happened, what is the machine waiting for? We found it to work very well.

Our plant had two glass tanks, one clear and one amber.
The amber side of the plant made about 11 million bottles a day on 6 lines. From the time the bottles came out of the aneiling oven until the forklift took them to the warehouse there were over 800 diferent motors on conveyors, inspection machines, packing machines and palletizers...and we had one shift man to keep all that area going. I did it for 10 years...never worked on a job that I loved more then that one. Sure I missed many lunch breaks, but when you went home you knew you had a good day if there were no machines down for the next guy to fix!!!!

We also did it all...welding, circuit board component repair, major amounts of wrenching, and more cleaning then you would believe...I still cann't touch a pile of grease without thinking of all the little slivers of metal and glass that might be in it!

David

 

[mordred]

all of the above steps are excellent one other poinbt to add is many ppl trying to troubleshoot and look at a schematic tends to get lost on a new machine. two good troubleshooting skills to add is to be able to break down the individual circuits from the overall schematics. Be familiar enough with the machine to understand which circuit he needs to look at.
And the biggest key point is to know where to get the information to solve his problem as well as what other resources he has available IE phone numbers to tech support.

I cannot stress the last point enough Many techs waste an inordinate amount of time searching for info

 

[surferb]

Troubleshooting is an important skill that's hard to briefly summarize. Nice post - keep the good info rolling!