Gamblers anonymous

"My vice does not involve staking wads of cash on Hurricane Fly to win in the 3.30 at Kempton or Rooney to score first against Chelsea," explains Jim. "No, the compulsion comes over me when I walk on site and see our compressor." Jim is an allegory for a growing gambling problem among UK manufacturers when it comes to the maintenance and repair of business-critical plant. More than 50% willingly punt on their machinery by adopting a reactive maintenance strategy, according to WM's Maintenance and Asset Management report. The problem is now surfacing in sites having a flutter on copycat compressor parts, according to Atlas Copco chief Dirk Ville. Replica components, billed as 'good as new', can be picked up for a third of the price of those offered by OEMs according to the British Compressed Air Society. They look the part, they feel the part, but more likely than not they'll only end up making your compressor fall apart. The trouble is it's just not easy to imitate a critical component like a rotary screw. You can reverse engineer every groove, but calculating the tolerance levels is nigh-on impossible without the OEM's original blueprint. Even if you are lucky enough to avoid a breakdown, you can expect to pay the price of someone else's best guess in your energy bills as the less-than-perfect element labours to convert ambient air to pressurized. All that heartache for a mythical price saving. Of course, Jim will scoff at such caution and, like all good betting shop bandits, regale you with tales of famous wins and quickfire fortunes. However, like all problem gamblers, the same Jim will own the distraught voice on the end of the phone, begging for another chance as his 'bargain' screw element causes the factory compressor to go bang in the night ahead of the busy morning shift. That, my friends, is a dead cert.