Machinery Lubrication magazine published by Noria Corporation
Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1206285
defective and the cause of the bearing failure. e oil supplier was fired, and a new oil was put into service. Will the second oil supplier be fired soon, too? The Critical Five Is it necessary for a person to use the DZT for optimized condition monitoring? Absolutely not. However, the table helps you understand the consequences of shoddy condition monitoring. As I've seen for years, just any oil analysis program is not good enough. e same is true with inspec- tion and the many other condition monitoring technologies and methods. Doing versus doing well can produce sharply different results. Think of the critical five as a simple way to define what is meant by "doing condition monitoring well." ey are as follows: e What — Know what you are trying to detect or analyze. Is it a symptom or a root cause? Is it measur- able or verifiable? Is it controllable? The W hy — Know why it is important. How does it affect reli- ability and asset availability? How does detecting and controlling it reduce the life-cycle costs, energy consumption and environmental impact? How does it increase safety? e Where — Where is the most effective location to find what you are trying to detect? How can this location be improved and made more convenient (installing inspection windows, for instance)? T he How — W hat sk i l ls, methods and tools will be needed for optimized detection and control? How can root causes be detected before the onset of failure? How can failure symptoms be detected early to extend the P-F interval and make remediation convenient without signif icant loss of the remaining useful life (RUL)? e When — When must condi- tion monitoring tasks be performed to achieve the reliability objectives? How can daily inspections and online monitoring play an effective role? Condition monitoring is like a treasure hunt. e greater fun is in the search. And yes, there is a treasure at the end. ML About the Author Jim Fitch has a wealth of "in the trenches" experience in lubrication, oil analysis, tribology and machinery failure investigations. Over the past two decades, he has presented hundreds of courses on these subjects. Jim has also published more than 200 technical arti- cles, papers and publications. He serves as a U.S. delegate to the ISO tribology and oil analysis working group. Since 2002, he has been the director and a board member of the International Council for Machinery Lubrication. He is the CEO and a co-founder of Noria Corporation. Contact Jim at jfitch@noria.com. ML