Machinery Lubrication magazine published by Noria Corporation
Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/388231
4 | September - October 2014 | www.machinerylubrication.com any companies thrive on financial performance metrics. Share price, earnings per share and return on net assets are taught religiously in every business school. This information is used to assess an organi- zation's financial health and drive current and future decisions. Even if you are not a CEO or investor, you probably are familiar with these metrics. Just as important are the metrics for safety coordinators, produc- tion managers and site managers. Unfortunately, few people understand lubrication and reliability metrics, much less use them. These metrics are not typically taught in engineering or management schools. This leads to a serious failure in recognizing the impact that lubrication has on a plant's production, profit and safety. For many plants, lubrication remains a challenge even to this day. According to numerous case studies, when a machine fails, the likelihood that the failure was in some way related to lubrication is greater than 70 percent. Lubrication key performance indicators (KPIs) can go a long way to help identify not only these issues but also others that affect production, profit and safety. They are all related and integral to a facility's overall success. Why have maintenance KPIs failed to become mainstream? Is it because they are not being taught? When was the last time you read about lubrication KPIs in a textbook or worked for a company that used them? As part of my role with Noria, I travel around the world and help companies get their lubrication programs on the right track. One observation that I have made over the years is that if your company is using lubrication metrics, you are in the top 2.5 percent of the industrial world. The foundation for lubrication KPIs starts with a few simple questions. Have you analyzed your mission as a company or group? Write down your three main objectives. The KPIs will need to relate to this mission in some way. Have you identified the stakeholders? When you complete your mission, who benefits? These are the people or companies that would be most interested in the results of your KPIs. Have you defined your goals? The majority of KPIs should be tied directly to achieving your goals. Next, let's set a few ground rules for these KPIs. No single KPI can adequately measure all aspects of a lubrication program. This means you must have multiple KPIs to make sure the data is reinforced. Each area of interest should have a limited number of KPIs (maximum of four to six) that will drive the desired behavior. If too many are selected, you may get lost in the data and data collection and lose sight of your objectives. KPIs must be relevant and specific to the particular program aspect they are designed to measure and preferably prepared from data that is available from existing systems. This makes the data collection much easier. KPIs should also have an associated target figure or finite goal. This could be dollars, a percentage, cleanliness level, etc., but it must be measurable in some way. Finally, the KPI must be presented in a clear, summarized format that shows present and historical performance, targets, bench- marks, etc. Now that you have a foundation and some ground rules, I'd l u b r i c a t i o n P r o g r a m s Jerem y Wrigh t | Nori a Corpor at ioN From The Field OIL AnALYSIS ALARMS Frequency Data Source Target Monthly/ Quarterly Oil Analysis Software 100% Green Definition Similar Measure to Asset Health - Broken Out: • Machine Health Alarms • Lubricant Health Alarms • Cleanliness Alarms Machine Health Lubricant Health Cleanliness Percent in Green Condition 98.75% 98.75% 97.28% Percent in Yellow Condition Percent in Red Condition 1.25% 1.25% 2.72% Total Locations Assessed 479 479 479 how to meAsUre lubrication ProGrAm sUCCess M