Does Your Refrigerated Facility Have a Strategic Parts Plan? It Should.

Author: Nick Kunis, PermaCold Parts Department.

At PermaCold, our decades of experience in providing parts and supplies for clients and our own technician teams have shown us that every facility needs a strategic parts plan in place, for many different reasons. It’s considered good practice and highly recommended that the end user stock a variety of critical backup equipment comprised of spare parts as recommended by the manufacturer(s) plus additional parts or supplies to help head off a looming future emergency.

An essential step in creating a parts plan is establishing a Preventative Maintenance (PM) program. PM programs are a proactive approach for ensuring that industrial refrigeration equipment and facilities run dependably and efficiently.

They also help avoid the worst (and most expensive) scenario: a shutdown that halts production, or results in product loss due to unplanned breakdowns or equipment failure. With that reality facing every facility manager, the importance of proper preventative maintenance should be priority one, backed by a strategic, smart parts plan specifically tailored for your facility.

The PermaCold Parts Department has developed its own proactive PM parts support service, which we offer as a complimentary expert consultation for all our parts customers. The goal is to ensure that vital and/or frequently needed parts and equipment are identified, pre-ordered, and readily available when our clients need them most. We know how critical our tech services are for clients, and our promise is to be their trusted partner in service, parts and expert consultation. As in-house shorthand in the parts department, we refer to this as our “PermaCold Parts Promise” or “P3” service.

Whether you have an existing maintenance contract with a trusted and experienced service provider (like PermaCold Engineering!) or handle facility maintenance in-house, you still need a supply stock of recommended spare parts, commonly used PM parts, and of course emergency parts and materials in case of an untimely crisis.

‘Emergency Insurance’

Considering the uncertainty factor in our national post-pandemic supply chains these days, having the part you need right when you need it is far from guaranteed. Certain parts can be challenging to source, or frustratingly slow to ship. Being confronted with a vital equipment repair issue, or a potential emergency replacement, and not having the critical part or supplies available could be disastrous.

The Parts Department at PermaCold has developed our P3 system to eliminate that stress. Our P3 service is a strategic approach to identify a carefully selected ‘emergency store’ of the most essential, most useful, and most commonly used parts and supplies that a facility might need across a range of potential maintenance or emergency scenarios.

The first step we take with clients is to focus on “recommended spare parts” that many equipment manufacturers provide in the service manual for a particular piece of equipment. For many of our daily parts requests, we ask customers for the model and serial number of their equipment, or to make it even easier they can often just send us a photo of the equipment’s nameplate which includes the project or job number.  In developing a P3 plan we can leverage the pre-existing info from the manufacturers combined with previous knowledge of said system and knowing which parts are most commonly used/needed at any particular facility to come up with a list for what needs to be kept on the shelf. For the most vital parts, which are priority number one of any plan, we want to make sure those items are identified and on hand. For these most important parts, you simply can’t afford to order after the fact and wait days or longer for a replacement part to show up, all the while costing you thousands of dollars in production costs, downtime, and expedited shipping penalties.

Once the most critical spare parts are identified, we can complete a plan based on your particular facility’s quirks, history, and PM records. Our parts team works directly with our savvy technician teams as they perform maintenance or repairs, and we leverage that knowledge to determine a client’s custom P3 plan. Each facility and its particular refrigeration system has a unique personality, and that dictates what it might also require in terms of other highly useful parts or supplies beyond the most critical spare parts.

 Increased Efficiency, Reduced Stress

Our expert parts team works hand in hand with our technicians to strategize and map out a customized list of vital parts and supplies that a particular facility should have in stock. For our customers who handle their own maintenance with in-house staff, we can review their facility specifications, past orders (to identify frequently needed items) or recurring repairs to help you determine their specific parts plan.

We encourage our customers to review and note down instances where they may have experienced a parts shortage or delay in the past. One of our mottos at PermaCold is to “plan ahead, get ahead, and stay ahead.”  For every client, we work in tandem with our service sales specialists to think through the most likely maintenance or repair scenarios for your specific refrigeration system and strategically create a list distinctly tailored for your facility and its demands. We’ll also identify needs based on the maintenance issues or emergencies that have come up before.

In either case, once your strategic spare parts plan is mapped out and a list is created, the PermaCold parts department will handle the ordering and double-check to make sure everything is accounted for. We’re also happy to stage and store your PM parts at our own facility, saving valuable space and eliminating inventory mistakes or the risk of items going missing due to on-site clutter to ensure that customers are up to date and have all the recommended parts on hand for their upcoming quarterly, bi-annual, and annual maintenance service.

Awesome Service, Value, and Our PermaCold Promise

Our promise is to help you avoid unnecessary stress, safety risks, and downtime.

Finally, we can’t wrap up without noting the added bonus of a strategic P3 Plan without talking about the thousands of dollars it can save due to better shipping rates and product pricing. This includes avoiding unnecessary and exorbitant rates for expedited shipping but also applies to the products themselves. Get ahead of the annual manufacturer price increase and avoid other potential price increases from unforeseen industry challenges, new taxes, or looming national economy issues in the process.

PermaCold prides itself on giving clients the best service in the industry, while also contributing valuable consultation and advice. This extends right through to our “best in the West” service tech teams and our experienced parts department. We’re committed to helping your business succeed and offer value beyond what most people might expect from just a run of the mill “refrigeration service provider.”

So, whether you’re interested in improving your system performance and lifespan by signing on with a PermaCold preventative maintenance agreement, or you handle your own facility maintenance, we highly recommend you take the time to develop a strategic parts plan and get those parts and supplies ordered and ready to go. It will save you time, part costs, future hassles, stress, and could potentially save you many thousands of dollars in emergency repair costs and downtime.

The PermaCold Parts team is standing by! 

We’d be happy to offer our expertise to help you get going with your own pre-set P3 plan. Give us a call, email us, or contact your existing PermaCold sales rep today. Plan ahead, get ahead, and stay ahead with a strategic P3 plan!

PermaCold Parts Department:  Ph: (503) 616-3424  |  Email:  Parts@PermaCold.com