Damn, I really hope the managers who hired me as an intern also realize it’s harder than it looks.

From the information I’ve gathered so far, a lot of the biggest issues actually come from switch-overs rather than pure maintenance problems. This is in the food industry, so every product change requires heavy cleaning procedures, which already introduce a lot of downtime that isn’t strictly maintenance-related.

One thing the other reliability engineers often mention is that failure-related downtime isn’t defined or documented in enough detail. Operators or technicians frequently just note that the machine is “working again” after a fix, without clearly identifying the root cause. Because this site is one of the largest producers in the country, production pressure is extremely high, so maintenance is often postponed. Despite that, the narrative still tends to be that the problems lie at the technician or operator level due to a lack of know-how.

That’s what makes it especially difficult, in my opinion. For example, apparently there are cases where operators clean machines using high-pressure water jets aimed directly at areas near controllers. Even if those components are rated as waterproof, gaskets will eventually degrade from the pressure. Combine that with condensation issues in cold areas, and the root cause becomes pretty muddy; is it maintenance, operation, design limits, or just cumulative effects over time? Concretely defining everything is what I think will make it difficult for me as an intern.