Magnet, leading distributors of Schneider Electric products and solutions, poses an important question: What if your production line stopped because of a single pushbutton?

Imagine the operating loss that may induce the failure of the operator control of your equipment, which represents less than 1% of its cost.

In industry, there is usually a loss of productivity that can exceed 10%, due to industrial equipment failures. This is a very important source of economy. To reach this deposit, a sum of precautions must be in place and we must think of every eventuality, including the failure of the operator dialogue devices. Installation stopping because of a banal pilot light or pushbutton is infuriating, and a few simple rules can avoid this.

To limit these cases there are not thousands of solutions, but rather three that can be combined:

1. You have to use reliable, high-quality components to minimize the occurrence of failures (failure prevention)

2. We can provide preventive maintenance by replacing a priori devices that may fail (preventive maintenance)

3. You can set up a highly reactive organization to minimize downtime (reactive maintenance)

Today, on average, we know that 30% of maintenance operations are preventive and 70% reactive, but the cursor moves increasingly toward preventive whose profitability is well-proven because the cost of a pushbutton switch is very small compared to the potential operating losses.

Schneider’s modular range Harmony™ diameter 22 can play optimally on three levers:

1. The most reliable on the market

The Harmony range is developed and qualified to achieve the highest possible level of reliability. Schneider’s laboratories use the endurance testing standards and robustness to harshest industrial environments. And their electrical endurance tests are done after component aging.

Schneider is still improving this strength in offering reinforced waterproof solutions (IP66, 67, 69, and 69K), extending the temperature operating range to -40 °C to 70 °C. These improvements not only allow Harmony to be installed in harsher environments, but also guarantee a higher lifetime.

Other unique features are limiting failure rates:

• Special design that eliminates the re-tightening campaigns for Harmony screw terminals, which are frequently forgotten. This is a good way not to be confronted with a loss of electrical continuity.
• A complete range of electrical contacts, which covers a very wide range of uses, including standard blocks with high electrical reliability guarantee, power blocks, and gold contacts blocks for low level
• Electrical contacts hooks with metal locks (including plastic versions)
• Snap mounting bases by metal clips (including plastic versions)
• Wide range of protective accessories (not only for product heads in front face, but also for the protection of contacts in the electrical cabinet)

2. With Harmony, you get the tools to optimize your preventive maintenance

Each component’s expected lifetime is specified, expressed in “lambda,” guaranteed number of operations, or mean time to failure. These periods are generally much higher than the lifetimes of equipment or machinery. But if necessary, to avoid any loss of business, it is cost effective to replace the most proven elements. By comparing the actual conditions of use of the products to these specifications customers can implement a preventative maintenance of good quality. Furthermore, the Schneider Electric™ field service team can help you make the diagnosis of the installed base to determine the critical equipment to replace preventively or spare parts collections to store in your factories.

3. With Harmony, limit as much as possible the time to repair of your equipment

Schneider Electric and Harmony offer you faultless support in reactive maintenance materials. With a strong distribution network 17000 outlets in the world, you can find the products to be replaced available near your plant. A “Distributor Locator” is available to find our closest distributors to your industrial facilities. Because of its modular design and the wide application market coverage (also recently strengthened by the extension of the waterproofness characteristics, operating temperature range, and the addition of new features such as timer, connectors USB or RJ45, flush mounting kits, etc.), the Harmony range ensures you can repair with a reduced number of spare parts (stored by our distributors or in your own maintenance stock).

Magnet backs its comprehensive range of Schneider Electric products and solutions with sound technical advice and support.

Need a Schneider solution for your facility? Contact Magnet now!