Unseen maintenance costs at a theme park
Sometimes ago, I visited a theme park in the US. While waiting for the roller coaster, the control system signaled a malfunction leading to temporally shutdown. The park goers had to wait for 25 minutes for maintenance. When the maintenance guy finally came, he used a key to flick the master reset button. They tested the system with some dummy cars and off we went.
About 2 hours later, I was in another rollercoaster which broke down near the end of the ride. The emergency brake came on mid-run and we remained suspended for 20 minutes. This time the maintenance guy used the loading station to rectify the problem. During the entire visit, I experienced 3 breakdowns translating to a wastage of one hour of my time. I wondered if the management will perform a root cause analysis to avoid the issue in the future.
Unplanned maintenance hurts business
Compare the scenario with the airline industry. If aircrafts broke as often as theme park rides, airlines would be out of business. The reason why aircrafts are so reliable is the practical maintenance philosophy adopted in the industry. Inspections are done after every flight and thorough servicing done at regular intervals for preventive maintenance.
Industry players have recognized that airline maintenance affects asset availability as well as business including energy efficiency, product quality, customer service, and the bottom line. Regular preventive maintenance eliminates the consequences of failure such as passenger compensation, catastrophic failures, frustrated travelers, and delayed flights. The airlines gain more by availing their assets. However, many industries do not recognize the importance of maintenance on the bottom line; they fail to see how the two are related. If collection of fare at amusement parks was done when people are loading into the roller coaster cars, the revenue would be directly impacted by the maintenance costs of breakdowns. Maybe this would push them to employ proactive theme park maintenance.
Long live the asset manager-The maintenance manager is dead!
It’s common to hear managers saying that they are too busy for theme park maintenance. However, costs related to emergency breakdowns are 3-9 times the cost of scheduled maintenance. This in witnessed when prepping the site, finding tools, finding instructions, chasing vendors, and locating parts. By minimizing the frequency of emergency breakdowns, you can increase productivity and reduce maintenance costs by 50-60%. It is not possible to completely eradicate emergency repairs but planned theme park maintenance can prevent them and significantly reduce the time it takes to repair.
But, you first need to know how to carry out preventive theme park maintenance. This can only be facilitated by a credible training institution such as ITI College. We offer training on industrial maintenance, which is applicable in theme park maintenance.
