Reset and run: the most expensive habit on site

It's half ten on a Tuesday. The case packer trips on overload. The operator opens the panel, pushes the overload back in and presses start. Two minutes lost. Nobody writes it down.

It trips again after lunch. Same fix. By Friday it's going every hour, and on Saturday night the motor cooks. Now you're waiting for a new motor. And when the engineer asks when it started, how often it tripped and what changed, nobody can say.

Reset and run feels like the cheap option. Each time, it is. Added up, it's the dearest habit on most shop floors. It turns a small fault you could have found on a Tuesday into a breakdown on a Saturday night.

Why everyone does it

Nobody resets a machine to be lazy. The operator is judged on output. The shift manager has an order to get out. The fitter is on another job across the site. A reset gets everyone back to work, and most of the time the machine runs.

That's the trap. Every reset that works teaches the floor that resetting works.

A trip is the machine telling you something. An overload goes because the motor drew too much current for too long. A drive trips on overcurrent for a reason. A jam sensor trips because something jammed. Reset it and you've silenced the message without reading it.

What the trip is usually telling you

In our experience, most repeat trips come from a short list:

• a bearing on its way out, so the motor works harder
• a gearbox or conveyor dragging from dry bearings, a tight chain or product build-up
• a loose terminal heating up in the panel
• an overload set wrong, or a motor swapped for one with a different rating
• a sensor that's dirty, knocked out of line or dying

None of them gets better with a reset. Most get worse, and some get dangerous. HSE's guidance on maintenance makes the same link: "additional hazards can occur when machinery becomes unreliable and develops faults" (HSE, maintenance). An unreliable machine is one people put their hands in more often, to clear jams and nudge things along.

If it's an overload, our guide to a motor tripping on overload has the checks in order. If it's a drive, start with inverter trips.

Some resets aren't yours to make

There's a harder line here, and it's about safety devices.

PUWER says that where a machine needs a start control, it must only be possible to start it "by a deliberate action on such control" (regulation 14). HSE's code of practice goes further. Operators should not normally be able to restart a machine just by resetting a protection device, such as an interlock or a light curtain. Pressing start should be needed as well (L22, paragraph 165).

So if your machine starts up the moment a guard closes or a light curtain clears, treat that as a fault in itself. Get it looked at this week.

And if a safety device keeps tripping, don't let anyone bridge it or tape it to get through the shift. Guards get defeated that way, one shift at a time. We've written more on how interlocked guards get defeated. A light curtain that trips for no reason has a reason. Find it.

Count the resets

Here's our view. A reset is fine once. The second one on the same fault in the same shift is a breakdown, and should be treated like one.

Give the floor a simple rule:

1. First trip: note the time and the alarm, then reset.
2. Second trip on the same fault in a shift: call maintenance before the next reset.
3. Third trip: the machine stays off until someone has found the cause.

The note matters more than the rule. Your fitter can't fix what nobody saw. A list of times and alarms, even scribbled on a card taped to the panel door, shows whether the trips follow heat, load, a product change or a time of day. For what else to capture, see writing a fault report an engineer can actually use.

Tell operators that raising it is part of their job. Under the Management Regulations, employees must tell their employer about anything they would reasonably see as "a shortcoming in the employer's protection arrangements" (regulation 14). A guard that keeps tripping fits that. So make it easy to say, and thank the people who say it.

Put a price on it

Reset and run survives because the cost is hidden. Two minutes here, five minutes there. Nobody adds them up.

So add them up. Take one machine and log every stop for a week. Multiply the minutes by your cost per hour of downtime. If you haven't worked out that figure yet, here's how.

Then add the big one: the breakdown at the end of the run of resets. The hours waiting. The motor on next-day delivery. The overtime to catch up, and the trailer that leaves late or empty.

And think about who's there when it finally goes. A repeat fault caught on a Tuesday afternoon is a planned job for your own fitter. The same fault at 2am on a Saturday, with your only fitter off, is a different bill. You pay for every hour the line stands until someone who knows that kit is on site. Most sites don't count that hour when they decide a reset is cheaper.

HSE's code of practice has a line worth keeping for budget meetings. When PUWER says kit must be maintained "in an efficient state", efficient is about safety: "it is not concerned with productivity" (L22, paragraph 70). The next paragraph warns that a fault in a safety-critical system "could remain undetected" unless safety checks are part of maintenance (L22, paragraph 71). A machine that trips all day is a safety problem as well as a production one. Say so when you ask for the money to fix it.

What to do on Monday

1. Pick the machine that gets reset most. Log every stop on it for a week, with the time and the alarm.
2. Agree the two-trip rule with your shift managers and put it on the panel door.
3. Check that every interlocked guard and light curtain needs a press of the start button after a reset.
4. Decide who you'll call when the reset stops working, before it does.

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