Things go wrong in your plant all the time, but today is the day from you-know-where.

You arrive to find your security alarm battery died, and you can’t make it stop beeping. You replace the battery and peace is restored. Or is it?

Moving deeper into the plant, you see that the boiler water level is low because the check valves failed. All the water and steam has gone back to the return tank, which is shaking and banging. As a result, there’s no pressure in the tensioning equipment.

The conveyor broke a yoke and the drive gear jammed. Mrs. Smith’s special dress—due out this morning—is twelve feet in the air. You have an eight foot ladder….

While you’re trying to handle these situations, the dry cleaner comes to you and says his machine is doing nothing but beeping because the steam pressure is too low. And the presser reports a weird smell coming from the shirt press. She can’t even get by for a while with one of the irons because they’re spitting water and leaving marks on garments.

About ready to just head out the back door and go start the day over, you see an ominous amount of water coming up through the floor drain. It must be blocked somehow!

Maybe that’s why the wet cleaning machine is refusing to complete cycles….

In desperation you fire up the computer to look for help only to find that your website and app are both down, and the POS system has managed to get into a loop where it’s sending SPAM messages to everyone on your list.

Ever had a day like that?

I think it’s safe to say that if you had, you’d have quit the business. But many of those things can, and perhaps have, gone wrong at one point or another.

If you’re mechanically-inclined, you plunge in and start working the problem. But some owners of plants are more skilled in customer service, employee relations and business management. For them, any one of these is a nightmare.

Where do you go when you absolutely don’t know what to do? You call your mechanic. Sometimes it’s a general mechanic, sometimes you contact the distributor or manufacturer of the specific piece of equipment. You get the best person for the job, and you get back to being productive.

That’s Mechanical Magic.

All this month we’ll be saluting those who know which button to press, which hose to replace, where the blockage is, how to get things back in sync.

We’d love to hear your story of a situation where your mechanic was able to save the day. Send us a quick email and we’ll feature it: becca@fabricarecanada.com.