By Chuck Reed, Senior Ipsen Customer Service Sales Specialist
Taking inventory is a traditional end-of-year activity. Not only of your personal and company’s successes, but actual inventory of your assets, products, and tools.
While Ipsen recommends a monthly checkup of your spare parts inventory, if it’s been a while since you’ve reviewed your furnace’s spare parts reserve, now is a good time to review what you have, and make sure to order what you need before you need it.
The Quick Fix
The most frequently repaired or replaced parts inside a vacuum furnace are elements in the hot zone, seals, nozzles, and thermocouples. Maintenance teams frequently find themselves looking for simple, quick solutions for common problems, and having these commonly replaced spare parts on hand is the best way to ensure that they’ll have the right tools for the job.
Sometimes, due to the heating and cooling within the chamber, elements get loose and can cause shorts. Dropped parts, dirt, oil, or melted alloys can also damage elements. Fixing broken or damaged elements is the fastest way to get the furnace back in production, and having spare elements in your inventory is the quickest way to fix most problems.
Seal kits are another important resource to keep in stock. It’s easy to damage a seal. While we recommend cleaning your seals after every load, wiping off and vacuuming out debris that accumulates there, users can forget to spot check and tears can occur. Waiting to order power terminal seal kits and door lip seal kits until after one has failed can halt production for a couple of days until the parts have been delivered.
These resources don’t go bad and take up minimal space in your inventory until you put them to use.
Skip Ahead of the Supply Chain: Replenish Your Spares
Spare parts inventory is a living thing – as your furnace requires a part, it will need to be replenished. As your maintenance team uses a seal or an element, they should have the ability to make sure the part is promptly ordered and replaced.
The longer you’ve had your furnace, and the better you track the consumption of these parts, the easier it is to plan and budget for maintaining a healthy inventory of spare parts. The less you know about these trends, however, the more robust your spare parts inventory should be.
A list of commonly replaced components can be found in our spare parts kit brochure, or you can request a quote for a custom kit.
Looking it Up
It can be difficult describing a specific pump, fixture, or part over the phone or by email when placing an order. The best way for an Ipsen customer service (ICS) representative to help you identify the part you need is by having the serial and model number of your furnace ready, by comparing the part to your furnace’s bill of materials (BOM), and by taking several photos of the part from the front and the side, as well as its location on the furnace.
While the model and serial number can be located on the plaque on your furnace, you might not know that you can also find your furnace’s BOM in your CompuVac or VacuProf systems for most furnaces built after 2008. Subscribers to Ipsen Connect also have access to their BOM and can frequently place orders directly from the interface, review previous orders, repeat a previous order, or contact their Ipsen Service Engineer.
Also, be sure to tell us when there have been significant changes to your Ipsen furnace. Ipsen hot zone elements may not be compatible in furnaces that have used a non-Ipsen hot zone replacement, for example. If you’ve had a pump rebuilt or replaced by a third party, be sure to let us know the maker, model number, and serial number of the pump when you’re looking for replacement parts.
Spare Me the Wait
It’s nearly impossible to anticipate the level of demand for common parts because Ipsen furnaces are so unique and customizable. While we strive to stock as many items as possible, the customer-driven process of developing Ipsen furnaces limits our ability to keep parts on hand for every furnace we’ve made. It’s why we always recommend customers maintain a healthy inventory of spare parts for their specific machine.
Common parts are typically delivered within one to three days, so it’s always better to be prepared with spares on hand than risking potential downtime.
It’s All Part of the Plan
What sets Ipsen ahead of our competition is our robust knowledge and staff of experts. The Ipsen Customer Service Team is one of the best reasons to own an Ipsen furnace.
Any time a customer isn’t 100 percent sure about what part they are requesting, the more photographs and information we collect will give us a better understanding of the exact part that’s needed. Armed with enough information, our team has the knowledge and expertise to determine the correct part, help with troubleshooting, and diagnose issues that may require further investigation. Ipsen’s technical resources and service capabilities help us get customers the right parts the first time.