Redundancy is a big word in business; it can be a great word or a bad word. If you have it, it’s a really good word. If you don’t, it’s a bad reminder of when you should’ve had it.
Recently at Hycomp Inc. we lost our internet and phone services for nearly an entire day due to a cut fiber optic cable over 500 miles away. This misfortune disconnected our ability to communicate with the outside world via phone and email—vital elements in the day to day operations of our company. This communication downtime put us behind on several issues; for those that were affected, we apologize.
Not wanting to repeat this ordeal, we are installing a backup internet connection via a completely different service, that will guarantee us the ability to operate in our usual productive manner if our primary connection ever fails again. We will be able to communicate to those who matter most to our business, namely our customers. We are securing our ability to operate and remain online through the protection of redundancy.
Downtime can be a detriment to any company, from not being able to communicate with clients to completely disabling production. PET blow molded packaging, nitrogen-assisted metal laser cutting, air starting diesel engines or vapor recovery in the oil & gas industry—no application is exempt from the harm of downtime. That is, unless they are protected by redundant systems.
When it comes to reciprocating equipment like Hycomp compressors, even when a company follows preventative maintenance schedules to the letter, there are still unforeseen incidences that can cause a compressor to be offline for a time. With a second compressor readily available, customers can instantly switch to the secondary compressor, allowing the primary compressor to be maintained while the system is still up and running, resulting in zero downtime.
For example, an international pharmaceuticals manufacturing company is currently building a new facility in Central America. Downtime is so expensive (over $200,000 a day) for their manufacturing process that they purchased a pair of duplex Hycomp air booster systems that provide full redundancy. Although the entire system cost more on the front end of the project, when compared to the cost of downtime and its accompanying stress, a redundant system will end up costing them less in the long run, and they consider it an inexpensive insurance policy.
Just like Hycomp and our backup phone and internet system, we hope end-users will enjoy the benefit of a simple solution: redundancy. Redundancy offers the benefit of peace of mind to any company, knowing they will always avoid costly downtime while continuing to experiencing peak performance.