免费吃瓜

If you鈥檙e reading this blog, we鈥檙e willing to guess you鈥檙e either a food and beverage or personal hygiene manufacturer. The solutions you work with might range from听ultra-high temperature systems听迟辞听sanitary pumps听补苍诲听valves听迟辞听evaporation equipment. Sound familiar?

Your plant production schedules are strict with limited room for flexibility because you and fellow producers feed and nourish the world daily. Sample creations like听,听,听听补苍诲听听products keep our world turning and fulfilled. When not monitoring production schedules, the impact of money can be felt throughout operations and at times, leaving limited budget for maintenance upgrades. So, it comes as no surprise that producers of all types look to save a few bucks by leveraging will-fit or piracy parts instead of using genuine OEM parts, better known as, parts directly designed by the original manufacturer of the equipment.

As an听, we鈥檙e aware of the market of these parts and your motivations to purchase them. But are they worth the savings?

听

A Matter of Time

With time, all parts will wear down. It is inevitable they will need maintenance and upgrades. When the time comes to replace the original genuine OE parts that come with your product, producers must decide:听will they replace the part with another premium,听genuine OEM听part or a will-fit, non-OEM part?听Will-fits, as their name implies, are parts (rotors, bearings, bolts) often made by third-party suppliers that replicate the size, material quality and functionality of original parts. They tend to be cheaper, similar in design and work in the system design. Sounds simple enough.

But, for how long?

Almost Doesn鈥檛 Count

On a recent service call for a nationally known U.S. company,听an APV heat exchanger听team member visited a customer's plant to help service blades that were falling off the exchanger and into the product stream. For the sake of this blog article, we鈥檒l call this team member Jake.

Upon further evaluation, Jake found that the blades in question were made much more inexpensively, using will-fit parts to cut costs. Specifically, the blades were made of 409 stainless steel, whereas the OEM blade called for 410 stainless steel. Given 409鈥檚 softer metal rating, premature wear was allowing worn blade material to contaminate the product stream. Mistakes like these may threaten听.

What鈥檚 the big difference?

Aside from Jake鈥檚 experience, updating food and beverage systems using OEM genuine parts is good for business. Try thinking through these questions when making the best decision for your plant:

1. What is the longevity or lifecycle of the part?听If an inexpensive part has a shorter replacement cycle and you must replace it more often, you are not optimizing your uptime, nor are you optimizing your maintenance costs.
2. What are the service benefits attached to using OEM parts?听We can鈥檛 speak for all process solutions providers, but听免费吃瓜 Nutrition & Health听experts service the food and beverage industry through a wide network of customer and technical support partners that help producers gain access to the right part at the right time.
3. What鈥檚 changed in compliance/regulation since the original purchase?听OEM genuine parts are identical to the original part and perform as originally designed. As upgrades or changes become available, our engineering team ensures the proper changes are also made on older products. For instance, as the FDA changed their standards for FDA approved homogenizer packings, our engineering team made the appropriate change, and after testing, offered a new product line.
4. Are there any warranty or safety ratings to consider?听It is up to you, the producer, to ensure the replacement parts have passed all important food safety designations. Non-FDA approved replacement parts risk de-rating the entire process line.
5. Will I always have someone available to听service听it?听This varies from partner to partner in our network, but when we cannot guarantee the quality of will-fit parts, our service personnel reserve the right to not work on producer equipment if non-OEM parts are used.

After weighing the odds, we found it鈥檚 best to not gamble on will-fit or pirate parts. There鈥檚 just too much at stake, and no one looks forward to buffering in downtime as the result of a defective part.

Trust the originals,听 here.