PIT BOSS Blog

In the past decade, incidents of copper wire theft have risen dramatically.

Driven by the demand for building materials in burgeoning overseas markets like China and India, copper prices have risen more than 400% in the past five years and shows no signs of stopping.

Record high prices, availability, low level of risk and until recently, light legal penalties if caught, have caused what some would say is an epidemic of crime in major centres throughout North America.

Downtime, the mere mention of it makes wallets slam shut and sends shivers down the spine. It’s a dirty word that is talked about endlessly; it’s the main topic of discussion at meetings and continuous improvement programs everywhere.

Downtime affects all areas and levels of business; it’s like a plague, an incurable disease and an endless source of torment that manufacturers, consultants and practitioners of long forgotten and mysterious dark arts all promise to help you reduce so you can increase production, operate more efficiently, be more profitable and sleep better at night. You would think that something that carries such a heavy weight to attract so much attention would eventually get solved, but the source of downtime can be so far reaching and difficult to assess that it is almost impossible to get a handle on.

At one time in the not so distant past, bigger was synonymous with better, faster and stronger.

A bigger plant equaled more production, but thanks to technological advancements in computer software like Solidworks 3D Cad, modern aggregate processing equipment is being designed and developed with an emphasis on increasing plant efficiency, reducing size and weight and reducing the overall cost of ownership by increasing in spec uptime production and reducing maintenance and downtime. To the end user this means that the next generation of equipment is highly efficient and in many cases, lighter in weight and requires a considerably smaller footprint to run.