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Running a warehouse or manufacturing facility isn’t easy.
Every day, you’re expected to keep product moving in, around, and out the door. Faster. Safer. With fewer problems and zero incidents.
That’s a lot to carry. It can feel like an impossible ask, but we’re here to help make it possible.
On this show, we dig into the real challenges happening on the floor and at the loading dock. Each episode, you’ll hear from industry experts, operators, and problem-solvers who share practical ways to improve quality, boost productivity, and keep facilities running smoothly.
Our goal is simple. Share new ways to tackle challenges that never seem to end so your people and your product get in, around, and out the door safely. You ready to clock in?
Bob Glover (00:00):
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Those facilities and that equipment is expensive and it's safety related a lot of times to the dock. If your equipment's not maintained and it's not safe, you don't know that it's safe, that can be a major safety issue. And if you're not maintaining, it's just like your car. I mean, you can't drive 20, 30,000 miles without changing the oil. Same thing with your dock equipment. If you don't maintain it, it's a mechanical piece of equipment. It's going to fail at some point if you don't maintain it.
Mike Smith (00:29):
Clocking in, the podcast for people who keep products moving in and out of industrial facilities every day. I'm your host, Mike Smith, director of product at Robert Dietrick Company. All right, welcome to the Clocking In Podcast brought to you by Robert Dietrick Company. I'm your host, Mike Smith. We have Bob Glover, an account representative here at RDC with us. Welcome to the show.
Bob Glover (00:55):
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Mike Smith (00:56):
Bob, you are somebody that, in my opinion, champions PM. Some have called you the king of PM, but all of us here at RDC very much believe in putting preventative maintenance or PM at the center of the customer relationship. Give me a 15 second rant on what that means to you, having PM in the very core or center of the relationship with our customers.
Bob Glover (01:22):
Yeah, I think it's huge. You can build a relationship around it, but it's also important for our customers to keep their facilities running. But basically, PM is just our way of keeping small issues small, trying to prevent them from becoming big ones down the road.
Mike Smith (01:37):
As you probably guessed by now, today's episode is all about preventative maintenance or what we call PM and why should we even bother with it? To follow that up, here's a quote I want you to think about and then I want us to circle back to it later. The quote is an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. This was a quote I heard from a coworker of ours, Alyssa. She wrote an article about PM about a year ago probably. It's up on her website. And this quote was in her article. Go check it out. I'm not going to give you any more than that. But she connected that to preventative maintenance. Really, really cool quote. And we'll come back to that here in a minute. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In our time together today, we want to talk about what PM is.
(02:24):
I want to talk about why facility leaders should be fiercely loyal to a PM program. And then lastly, what does a great PM program look like? We actually want to go through the steps of just PMing equipment itself. Let's start with this. You and I clock in, we're going to go on the clock here, have a conversation about preventative maintenance. Let's start with the definition. What is preventative maintenance?
Bob Glover (02:51):
We kind of hit on it already, but it's just regular service that you're doing at set intervals on your equipment with the goal of limiting big issues, basically keeping small issues, identifying them early and not only allowing them to grow into bigger, more expensive problems down the road.
Mike Smith (03:08):
Great working definition. Total shift change here, but why do industrial facilities exist? What's the point of a warehousing facility production facility? Why does it exist?
Bob Glover (03:19):
They're making something, right? They're producing a product with the goal to make a profit. And basically what they're doing is they're bringing raw materials in through a dock. They're making something, producing it, and then they're shipping it back out to their customers through those same docks when it's finished product.
Mike Smith (03:35):
So you're bringing stuff in, you're doing something with stuff, you're shipping stuff back out, right? In its simplest form, that's what an industrial facility does. So according to that definition then of an industrial facility, what equipment is most critical to perform preventative maintenance on?
Bob Glover (03:54):
That's going to depend a lot on the facility, but a lot of times we go in, we're talking with facility managers. Their concerns are a lot of times on production equipment because that's what's making their product that they need to sell. But if you think about how you have to make that product, you have to bring raw material in and you have to ship your finished product to your customer. And if you can't get material in and you can't ship finished product out, you're kind of stuck. So to me, anything at the dock, whether it's the door, dock leveler, dock lock, any piece of equipment there is going to be pretty important. I'm sure there's a lot of other important equipment too, but if you get anything in and out, that becomes a big problem.
Mike Smith (04:33):
Major problem. I don't think people think about industrial facilities like that enough. You kind of take the docks for granted. They're there, they work. They're there every time we need them. But when one goes down, you start to feel it or two or three go down, you really start to feel it. Have you seen the movie Interstellar?
Bob Glover (04:49):
Yep.
Mike Smith (04:50):
You have seen it whole thing?
Bob Glover (04:51):
Yep.
Mike Smith (04:52):
Okay. There's this moment where he's trying to dock up to the bigger ship and it's like sweating. It's a tense moment. And you know if that doesn't happen, nothing the rest of the movie is going to work out and he ends up doing it and all is fine. But your loading dock is like that. I mean, you're asking someone to dock or back into your building, hopefully get restrained and locked in and they become an extension of your building. It's a wild process. You're ramping a forklift and thousands of pound of material across this bridge and you need to do it safely. You need to do it every time the equipment's asked to do it. And PM is a huge part of it. You can't get there without doing preventative maintenance. Why invest in PM? Why not just run the equipment, wait till something breaks, get Max life out of it and then address it when it breaks?
(05:46):
I mean, what's the point of stopping, doing PM, planning maintenance out? Why bother with it?
Bob Glover (05:52):
It all goes back to that first quote you said, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Those facilities and that equipment is expensive and it's safety related a lot of times at the dock. We talked about when you back a trailer in, that's a big safety concern. You're leaving the building going into a trailer. There's a ton of safety issues that could occur there. If your equipment's not maintained and it's not safe, you don't know that it's safe, that can be a major safety issue. And if you're not maintaining, it's just like your car. I mean, you can't drive 20, 30,000 miles without changing the oil and then not have an issue. Same thing with your dock equipment. If you don't maintain it, it's a mechanical piece of equipment. It's going to fail at some point if you don't maintain it. And when it does fail, it's going to be probably not at a timely period.
(06:36):
The worst time posible.
Bob Glover (06:37):
It's going to be the worst time. And it's going to be probably expensive to fix it if you haven't taken care of those small issues leading up to it.
Mike Smith (06:44):
I'd rather go with the ounce of prevention than the pound of cure for sure. Outside of the loading dock, I want to touch on this real quick and all the equipment at a loading dock, restraints, locks, levelers, doors, what else do people need to consider PMing as far as the critical equipment? I mean, you've got fire doors, high speed doors, fans, but what other types of equipment should we be thinking about PMing not just at the loading dock?
Bob Glover (07:11):
There's a lot of things in the facility. There's production equipment like we talked about. You need to keep your product moving down the line. Fork trucks, it's just like a vehicle. And that's moving your product throughout the plant, taking it from those lines to the dock equipment. But the dock doors, there's a ton of issues there that you can get into with the springs they're not maintained and lubricated. But I think seals and shelters are an important part of PM too. I think that's something that needs to be looked at. It can get overlooked a lot of times, but in food facilities, it's a huge deal to have no white light coming through. Energy efficiency for any facility, especially in the wintertime, trying to keep the energy in the building and not outside. So there's a lot other than just the moving parts that we think of at a dock locker or a leveler, but there's a ton in a facility to take care of.
Mike Smith (08:03):
That's a good point about seals and shelters because going back to that quote, by the time you notice something's wrong,
Bob Glover (08:09):
You
Mike Smith (08:09):
Got a gaping hole for weeks
Bob Glover (08:11):
Or
Mike Smith (08:11):
Months while you're waiting on a side pad or a part for a seal. So great point there. Talk to me a little bit about what a great PM looks like. I think everybody, I don't know what people envision in their mind when you talk about PM or preventative maintenance, but we here at RDC have five literal steps or paces that we go through. Talk to me about what those five steps are. And I'll intro each one of them, but we follow a five-step process. At a minimum, this is what should be going on. Step one, clean.
Bob Glover (08:47):
Pretty basic. Let's
Mike Smith (08:48):
Park
Bob Glover (08:48):
There for a minute. Yep. Pretty basic, right? We're sweeping out pits. We're keeping the area clean of debris from things getting in the way of the operation of the equipment. Might be pallet pieces in the pit or on the approach where the dock lock's at, but just we're cleaning it up and those things can become injury issues too. There's a lot of sharp pieces that are around the dock area, things that get broken. So it's just really cleaning that area around the equipment you're working on. I've
Mike Smith (09:14):
Been a technician for a couple decades, so I've crawled around in a lot of leveler pits, floor spaces outside the loading dock, curdled milk, snakes, rotting things. I mean, you name it. Some of them get pretty gnarly. And I know when I started here, I was so eager to weld and fabricate and do some repairs on levelers. And Chris Bellamy, I hope he's listening to this, used to tell me, look, I'll let you pick up a stinger
(09:40):
Once I know you know how to use a pit broom. To him, it was a big deal. And that's really who mentored me here. You can't do anything until you show me that you know how to sweep a leveler pit out, make it clean, make it safe. And that's important because we leave after the PM and sometimes a maintenance person or someone on the facility team will have to go out and lay in a pit. Hopefully they're doing that safely and look at something and you want a clean pit. You have GMP standards and inspections and auditors that come. They want to see your leveler pits cleaned. So step one clean is in my opinion, one of the most important steps in this process. Secondly, inspect. We clean, then we inspect. What's that look like?
Bob Glover (10:20):
Yep. We're basically inspecting the equipment to see what issues are there that we can see. So are there cracked welds, broken stringers? Anything visually that's sticking out to us, we look through it, take a detailed look through it, note those things. But yeah, we're just looking to make sure we're identifying all the issues that are there from the very front of the leveler to underneath all the way to that rear hinge in the pit.
Mike Smith (10:46):
And that's a great point. Something else I think that we do really well during a PM is we will actually get into the pit after it's cleaned and swept out and lay on your back, which is sometimes not always fun. And actually look at your rear hinges, your weldments, pins. Everything should be in place. And then we not only perform a visual inspection, but we also move into step three. So you got clean, inspect. Now step three, lubricate. Once we've done the visual inspection, we go through and lube everything. Talk to me about that.
Bob Glover (11:21):
Obviously very important, but I think a lot of times on a very basic PM, this would be the only step a lot of people might do is lubricate. They run through and they just lubricate. It's important, but it needs to be a step in that whole process. But we're lubricating the applicable moving parts. There's certain parts that shouldn't be lubricated too, but we're lubricating everything that's applicable. So that front and rear hinge and the moving parts that need it to keep those well oiled and moving well.
Mike Smith (11:47):
You touched on another point I didn't expect or even think of myself, but going back to my years in the field, one of the indicators that someone is doing a good PM for you is they know what not to lubricate. There are things on door operators, hold down assemblies under levelers, fire doors, high speed doors. There's things you don't want to lubricate. Knowing what to spray a lube on or pump grease into versus what not to, or even what kind of grease to use an indicator that you've got a really professional company and they're doing your PM. Interesting to think about it that way. Fourth step, so we've got clean and inspect, lubricate, adjust. All right, what are we adjusting? What are we not adjusting on a PM? Give me some examples of things that we would adjust and then maybe follow it up with some examples of things like we wouldn't adjust that might be outside of the scope of preventative maintenance.
Bob Glover (12:39):
Yep. So adjustment wise, when I think about that, I immediately go to mechanical levelers. So spring tension on mechanical levelers, maybe we need to adjust that so it comes up a little bit hotter or it's easier to walk down. But mechanical levelers, there's a ton of moving parts with those that probably need adjustment to run correctly and efficiently. And then dock doors on the adjustment to springs. I mean, I always think about those springs kind of losing tension and then dock door drifting down and that's when it gets hit with a fork truck going in and out of a trailer. So those are the two that really jump out to me on adjustment, but lip out mechanisms, things like that that are really mechanical.
Mike Smith (13:17):
There's a lot of different adjustments on a PM. There are things we're going to catch, pins missing, things about to work themselves out or fall out of adjustment. Maybe it's a limit switch or a valve adjustment that needs made. All your basic adjustments and things to check that can prevent work later on down the road needing done are checked on a PM and caught. So it just feeds into that quote from earlier, pay me now or pay me later. Hopefully you pay a little less by doing it preventatively. Lastly, last step in the PM process, document. This is a big one for us. We have asset tags on all of our equipment. Talk to me about really the whole documentation process during a PM because I think that's the bookend on this whole thing that makes it really come together for people.
Bob Glover (14:02):
Yeah. I think that to me is probably the most important step of the PM. And it's not even you're touching the equipment. It's just documenting what you've done, what the issues are, if there are any. Or if there's not, then we write it up with no issues too. But a huge part of I think why our PM program has grown so much is that a lot of customers want to have third party verification that the equipment's in good shape. Because unfortunately accidents do happen at the dock sometimes. And the first thing they're going to want to know when something happens, they're going to say, "All right, well, let me see the PM reports and the service history on this equipment to make sure that it's in good, safe working condition." So customers want that. They want third party verification for sure. RDC Digital now allows our PM customers to go through and have a history of their service reports, whether it's service or PM.
(14:47):
They can go back and see what work's been done. They can give some cost justification management on maybe a capital expenditure or something they need to do to replace equipment. Allows them to plan a little bit more down the road and not be surprised. And you can see all that when you go in there and you can request service and things like that too, but you can see all that history. And then it also allows, I think really important is the rep to become a consultant for the customer too. I think it's super important to not just make PM something we offer and we do it and we kind of walk away. It needs to be a consultation for the customer where you're going in and going through the documentation and saying, "Here's what's wrong, what we found. Maybe we need to take a look at replacing this equipment here in the near future.
(15:31):
Maybe it doesn't need it right now, but maybe a year or two years from now you might need it. " So I think it becomes a relationship builder and an opportunity for us to be a consultant for them.
Mike Smith (15:39):
Yeah. Tools like the cost of ownership analysis that just got put into RDC Digital and the ability to export all of your service and PM history from RDC Digital are real benefits to users, like justifying replacement or deciding whether it's time to replace or repair. All great things within RDC Digital. And that's really one of the things that makes RDC PM process really unique is RDC Digital that houses and contains all of that data. It's really theirs. It's the customer's data. We're just giving it back, giving them really what they already own,
(16:15):
Giving them visibility. I will say I wanted to throw in a personal word of testimony here. No going to name any names, but I came from a competitor out in the industry here locally before I worked for RDC. They're a very big competitor of ours even to this day. They had a great PM program in the sense that it touched a lot of customers, but they did not have a good PM program in that it was not as extensive and filled with integrity as ours was. I will not name that place like I said, but one of the things that astounded me when I came to RDC from that competitor was, wow, RDC really does PM. They break down locks, they tear down restraints, they pop levelers up, they put the safety strut in, they sweep things out. I was not used to that working for a competitor.
(17:05):
In fact, I was coached by management unfortunately to move fast. And literally the words were do a drive by PM. Spray some lube around, make it look like you did a PM, but you got to go. We got to turn over this facility quickly. And I know for me it reached the point because of that and several other things. I just knew that wasn't the place for me. I came to RDC and everything was totally different, but PM was one of those glaring things at the beginning that really stood out to me. I was like, wow, these guys really do it right. Those that are listening, and I'm probably going to say this at the end as well, whether RDC is doing your PM or not, know what your service provider's PM process looks like. We just went through five things that RDC does. We clean, we inspect, we lubricate, we adjust, we document.
(17:54):
Know what your process looks like even if we're not the ones in there doing it. You need to watch, you need to examine, you need to go outside and follow up, make sure it's being done right.
Bob Glover (18:03):
Yeah, absolutely. That's what we talked about is a lot of times they may not even know. They just kind of have an agreement to do PM with somebody. They think it's getting done and they don't know if it's being done correctly or not. But a lot of times we'll go in on our first PM and we can tell right away if it's been done correctly or if they're just kind of going through and just looping it up and moving on.
Mike Smith (18:24):
Yeah. We call that pencil whipping
(18:26):
In the field. All right. We have a nine item list to finish the podcast out with. Why it's nine and not 10? I don't know. There's probably like a hundred reasons that we could throw at. Why bother doing preventative maintenance? We came up with nine, but I want to go through these quickly. So we're going to finish our timeout together by discussing reasons why you should PM. Why bother PMing? Why do preventative maintenance? We've kind of covered some of them already, but I want to get more granular. So number one, safety. Talk to me about safety.
Bob Glover (19:02):
Yeah, I mean we hit on it before, but that's probably the number one reason you should be doing PM. There's a lot of reasons and expense reasons to do it, but safety should be the first reason that your employees are using equipment that's in good, safe, working condition and that they're going to go home safe every single night.
Mike Smith (19:20):
And you hit on it. Unfortunately, it's a world of liability that we live in. As soon as an injury happens or an accident happens, the first question that gets asked is show me the maintenance records. Show me the money. Show me the maintenance records. So reason number one, safety. Reason number two, owners expect it.
Bob Glover (19:39):
Building owners and company owners expect that they're going to be doing PM on equipment that's in the building that they've spent a lot of money to purchase. It's expensive equipment. I mean, it is. So they expect the care to be taken and especially companies that are leasing space as well.
Mike Smith (20:02):
Great point.
Bob Glover (20:03):
I mean, building owners are expecting you to maintain that equipment. And if you're not, they're probably going to come back for you when that lease is up.
Mike Smith (20:02):
That's a great point. And I've been at the receiving end of that. Warranty and manufacturer recommendations.
Bob Glover (20:08):
If you have an issue on your equipment, any manufacturer of that equipment's going to say, let me see the PM records, make sure you've been taking care of it. Anytime we call our manufacturers of their equipment that we're working on, the techs are in the field, they want to know, have you been maintaining it? If not, we need some records from the customer to show that they have been. Otherwise, you're probably not going to get it covered most likely.
Mike Smith (20:30):
Yeah. We've already talked about proactive versus reactive mindset a little bit, but talk to me more about that. Preventative maintenance, reason number four, being proactive versus reactive. Why is that a reason to participate in PM? I guess specifically you could hone in on downtime.
Bob Glover (20:49):
Any manufacturing facility is concerned about uptime or downtime. I mean, that's a huge deal. If you tell them you're down for an hour, they could put a cost associated to that. So it's huge for those facilities. If we don't maintain equipment, you're letting those smaller issues become major issues that take who knows how long. Parts sometimes are not readily available, which we found out the last five years through COVID that sometimes parts are hard to get and that equipment could be down for an extended period of time and that downtime is expensive.
Mike Smith (21:18):
Reason number five, we already covered this and it's really kind of an RDC thing, but reason five would be RDC Digital. At least the PMing with RDC. A huge advantage to working with us on a PM program. I hope other service providers out there have something like it, but I doubt it. So reason number five would be getting an awesome platform like RDC Digital. Reason number six, and this is also something that's unique about us, but I'm hoping you can talk about this a little bit. Discounted service rates.
Bob Glover (21:48):
Yep. Yeah. I mean, there's still going to be service on equipment. If you're doing regular PM, the goal is that you're reducing the service, but there still is. And being a PM customer is good for us. It's regular work for our guys to go out and it's regular business for us, but we also want to help the customers out there spending that regular money with us and give them an opportunity to take part in some of the discounting on the service rates. So depending on the tier of PM that you're doing, you're going to get discounted service rate for our guys to come out and work out on equipment.
Mike Smith (22:19):
Reason seven, you kind of talked about this early on, but get a full report of the current status of your operations and why that's important.
Bob Glover (22:29):
Yeah. Facility managers, maintenance managers have a ton on their plate. I mean, they're covering anything from the docks, exterior grounds to production equipment. And they're being asked, they need to answer for all of that equipment to their bosses. And so if they're asking us to come in and do this work, we need to be good consultants for them and give them the opportunity to have the right answers when they're being asked questions and to know exactly what's going on a full report wise of equipment at least we're working on.
Mike Smith (23:00):
Hear us facility leaders, you can't do it all. There's no way. And do you want to do it? Do you want to do it all? No. Have a great service provider like RDC and count on them to get you that full report. Reason eight, annual savings. We talked about this just a second ago, but the hope is that PM saves you some money annually. The data that we have through now having had RDC Digital for several years now is that customers who are PMing can save anywhere from 12 to 18% on their annual service costs versus companies that aren't PMing. And when you have a hundred docks, 200 docks, even 20 docks, that really adds up.
Bob Glover (23:47):
Yeah, that's the whole goal. Safety obviously was number one, but I think the second is that you're minimizing those big issues and reducing the service charges and the capital expenses on repairing that equipment.
Mike Smith (24:00):
I can attest to this again from having been in the field for years, but oftentimes you catch things on PM, you know it's going to be costly later on. It's going to probably mean four or five weeks of downtime. But because we caught it on a PM, I can put in the report, "Hey, this is going bad. It's about to fail. You're probably okay to use it for another few weeks until we can get the part in.” And you've saved all that money in downtime, all that money in rushing things here, trying to overnight things. The frustration, morale, and all the things that come along with having something down, you've avoided it all. And that translates to savings. Lastly, reason number nine, survival. Talk to me about that.
Bob Glover (24:41):
Yeah. It kind of goes back to facility managers not being able to do it all, but their goal is to help run a smooth, efficient business. And that is our goal with the PM program is to help the docs not worry about them. We talked about that before too, where they kind of get overlooked. That's kind of our goal. We want to PM them, keep them in good shape, that you're not having major issues with them and you can keep your business up and running and being efficient.
Mike Smith (25:07):
If you're on a leadership team out there listening, the whole goal of what you're doing is to make sure that facility's running in tip-top shape. And at the end of the day, you can say, "I did everything I could to keep my facility efficient, to keep it safe, to keep it productive, to keep it profitable.” You have people counting on you that need jobs and all the things, you carry a lot of pressure. At the end of the day, preventative maintenance is really about ensuring that you've done everything you can. I don't see how you can stand there and say that and not do it. So great conversation about PM. You and I got to clock out. Listeners got to clock in. I want to talk about a couple practical things people can do Monday morning when they think about PM in their facility. So number one, let's start here.
(25:56):
I'm a customer. I don't currently have a PM plan. Never even thought about PM. Some things you said made me think about it. How do I take the next step towards getting a PM plan put together or a quote put together? What do I do?
Bob Glover (26:10):
Yeah, just have your RDC rep come out. So give the local office a call, go online and find your rep on our map. But they'll come out, they'll go through a survey with you. They'll walk your docks with you, see what kind of equipment you have, the condition that it's in, the type of usage that it's getting. Just talk to you about the history of it and how you use your docks. And based on that, our reps will be able to say, "Hey, this is probably what we should be looking at doing PM and this equipment this frequently," and give you a good idea of what it would take to get you on a good PM program.
Mike Smith (26:41):
Yeah. And every facility's different. That's why you need somebody to come out and make a personal visit. Ask the discovery questions, get to know your operations. If you're running three shifts, getting 50 trucks a day at a dock position, you've got 15,000 pound trucks and 5,000 pound loads, your PM program's going to look a little different
Bob Glover (27:00):
Than
Mike Smith (27:00):
Maybe your neighbor down the road. So great place to start if you've never considered PM. If I'm a customer that has invested in PM, but my business has grown and evolved and changed, what should I do? Should I re-look at things? Should I reevaluate? Should I just roll with the same PM plan I've had 10 years ago?
Bob Glover (27:18):
I would talk to your rep and explain that situation to them and they can help you take a look at what you're doing now and what maybe you should be doing or shouldn't be doing. But our reps are well-informed on what businesses are doing today and how docs need to be handled from a PM standpoint. I mean, it costs nothing for a rep to come out and talk to you and look at your docks with you. Open up a leveler, look underneath it, talk about it a little bit, see what's going on and just have a conversation about your operation and how things might be different now.
Mike Smith (27:51):
Well, I want to end our conversation by saying thank you. And then also encouraging our listeners, whether you're doing PM with RDC or not, please do preventative maintenance for safety's sake, for savings sake, get to know your PM process, whoever's providing you with that service. Please consider us though. We'd love to come out and like you said, give you an evaluation and talk to you about your operation and put a plan together for you. I'll end with the quote we've said several times throughout this conversation. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Go out there and perform preventative maintenance. All right, it's good to be with you today.
Bob Glover (28:30):
Yeah, thanks, Mike.
Mike Smith (28:34):
Thank you for listening to Clocking In, brought to you by Robert Dietrick Company. If this was helpful to you, share this episode with someone else who could benefit from it. Don't forget to follow the show. And if you want more insights like this via email, go to rd-co.com.