Maintenance and Reliability
AS I SEE IT
JIM FITCH NORIA CORPORATION
A New LOOK at
CRITICALITY Analysis for
Machinery LUBRICATION
For decades, reliability scholars
have been stressing the importance
of prioritizing new maintenance thrusts and
investments based on need. The word they
like to use is "criticality." For any given
machine, how critical is its reliability? What
if it failed suddenly and catastrophically?
What would be the consequences — lost
production, expensive repairs, fatality?
Criticality is the logical starting point for all
reliability initiatives.
There are many different ways to enhance
reliability and improve the quality of mainteFigure 1. Machine Criticality Factor (MCF)
(Relates to the consequences of machine failure)
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March - April 2013
| www.machinerylubrication.com
nance. The best options should be risk-based.
After all, if it doesn't reduce risk, why do it?
Why spend an incremental dollar to enhance
a machine's reliability if it doesn't yield
multiple dollars in return?
There's also priority. What should be
done first, second and third, and what
should not be done at all? How do you
know which machines return big dollars for
enhanced reliability, which machines return
marginal dollars and which machines
return nothing at all?
Once you understand machine criticality
and a machine's risk profile, you can work
smarter to customize improvements. For
guidance, look to the Pareto principle,
which states that 20 percent of the
machines cause 80 percent of the reliability
problems. Which machines are these?
In addition, consider that 20 percent of
the causes of failure are responsible for 80
percent of the occurrences of failure. Which
causes are these? It's about precision —
precision maintenance and precision
lubrication. It's also knowing how to make
wise, risk-informed choices.
