Machine maker's engineer or local engineer: who to call for which breakdown

It's Monday night. The stretch wrapper at the end of line 2 has stopped with a servo fault on the carriage. The machine came from a maker in northern Italy. You ring their UK service desk. A friendly voice says an engineer can be with you on Thursday.

Thursday.

Meanwhile pallets are stacking up unwrapped at the end of the line. Someone suggests hand wrapping. Someone else suggests ringing a local engineer, who could be there in two hours but has never seen this machine.

Which do you call? The honest answer is that it depends on what's actually broken. Most sites pick by habit, and that habit costs them days.

What the maker's engineer is for

There are faults where only the maker will do. HSE's maintenance guidance recognises this. With high-risk or complex equipment, some work "may be best undertaken by the manufacturer or specialist contractors" (HSE, maintenance).

We'd call the maker when the fault involves:

• the machine's own software, recipes or locked PLC code you can't get into
• the safety PLC, safety relays or anything that changes how guards and stops behave
• firmware on a drive or servo that's been set up for that machine and nowhere else
• parts made only for that machine, like a cam, a custom head or a cutting tool
• anything still under warranty, where your contract says only the maker may touch it
• a fault the maker has seen on other machines and you haven't

Before the night comes, read your purchase contract. Some say who can work on the machine during warranty. Some say nothing. You want to know which before you ring anyone.

If the kit is hired, the hire firm may hold the maintenance duty. HSE's code of practice says both parties should agree who does the safety-related maintenance, and set it out in writing (L22, paragraph 77).

What a good local engineer is for

Most of any machine is standard parts. Motors, gearboxes, bearings, belts, chains, pneumatic valves and cylinders, contactors, overloads, sensors, encoders, and drives from the big ranges. A good local fitter, electrician or controls engineer has worked on all of them, on dozens of different machines.

HSE's guidance backs this too. "In many cases, maintenance can be done in-house by suitably trained, competent staff" (HSE, maintenance). The same goes for a competent engineer you bring in.

So on that Monday night, ask what the servo fault actually is. A carriage servo that trips on overcurrent might be a seized bearing, a damaged cable on a drag chain, or a loose encoder plug. A local engineer can find any of those tonight. If it turns out to be a parameter only the maker can see, you've lost two hours and learned something. If it's the cable, you've saved three days.

Count the days, not the call-out fee

This is where the real cost hides. The maker's engineer may be very good. But three days of a stood wrapper means three days of hand wrapping, overtime, late loads or a stood line. Put your cost per hour of downtime against 72 hours and the call-out fee barely registers.

Our view is simple. For anything that isn't clearly maker-only, get a local engineer on it first. Let them find out what's broken. If it needs the maker, you'll know sooner and you can tell the service desk exactly what you need.

Use both at once

The best result is often both. The local engineer is on site with a meter and a laptop. The maker's support line is on the phone or a video call. Between them, a lot of "Thursday" faults get fixed on Monday night. We've written about getting the most out of the machine supplier's helpline and when a video call fixes it.

To make that work, the local engineer needs the maker's information. PUWER requires adequate health and safety information and, where appropriate, written instructions to be available to those who use the kit (regulation 8). The code of practice expects maintenance to follow "the manufacturer's recommendations" (L22, paragraph 74). So keep the manuals, the electrical drawings and the parameter backups somewhere you can find them at night. A PDF on the shared drive is fine, as long as someone on nights can get to it.

Whoever comes, brief them properly

Your duties don't change because someone else is fixing the machine. You must give the employer of anyone working on your site clear information about the risks and how you control them (Management Regulations, regulation 12). When two employers share a workplace, even for one night, each must co-operate with the other (regulation 11).

In practice, send the brief before they set off. Make, model and serial. What it was doing when it stopped. HMI photos. What's been tried. Isolation points. Site rules. Who signs off the restart. Our post on what to have ready before the callout engineer arrives has a full list. HSE's short guide Using contractors (INDG368) covers what to check before anyone starts, and contractors on site sets out what you owe them.

A simple rule for the wall

Put this in the maintenance office:

1. Locked software, safety systems, warranty work, or maker-only parts: ring the maker.
2. Motors, gearboxes, bearings, pneumatics, sensors, contactors, standard drives: get a local engineer on it now.
3. Not sure: get a local engineer on site and the maker on the phone together.

What to do on Monday

1. List your ten most critical machines and write down who to call for each kind of fault.
2. Check the warranty terms for every machine still under warranty.
3. Make sure manuals, drawings and parameter backups for every critical machine are where a night shift can reach them.
4. Line up a local engineer for the faults on that list, before the maker says Thursday.

* Paragraph numbers refer to L22, fourth edition (2014, amended 2018).