Machinery Lubrication magazine published by Noria Corporation
Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1470959
www.machinerylubrication.com | May - June 2022 | 25 ML ML Does this organization use its current resources efficiently and effectively? Said another way, does this organization have credit- ability? No and No. How is creditability earned? ML Selling the Program How do you sell a plant manager on a new lube program? To craft a business case, many maintenance managers or reliability engineers benchmark others who are best in class, refer- ence articles, go to a seminar and quote rules of thumb. For example, they may conclude, "We should be able to cut our maintenance budget by 20%, increase our equipment uptime by 10 percentage points and improve our product yield by five percent. ese total a business impact of $2 million per year. All I need upfront is $50,000 for training, $200,000 per year to hire two lubrication technicians, train them to level II techni- cians for $20,000, spend $100,000 upgrading our lube room and $130,000 to improve our assets with sampling ports, labeling, breathers, fixing leaks and small equipment modifications. With this $500,000 initial investment and $200,000 reoccurring each year, we expect to get $2 million in return, beginning in year three." is is all packaged together in an impres- sive 10-slide PowerPoint presentation with pictures and animation for the leadership team. Impressive right? How could the plant manager say no? You are offering a return of $2 million for an investment of $500,000 in just three years. Nevertheless, they say no. Worse yet, they ask for more information; you return with that information, and you get asked for more information. Sound familiar? What is going on? Let's get into the plant manager's head for a moment and expose some truths. Plant managers are expected to show improved results quarter over quarter (if they are lucky) or month over month (which is more typical). Plant managers want great ideas and are willing to take bold actions. However, you must recognize that you are competing for time and resources. As a plant manager, I selected three to five game-changing initiatives to drive hard at my plants. Driving 50 initiatives leads to failure; maintaining 47 and driving three to a new level of performance changes the business. Every week, I would get asked to sponsor 10 new programs. Reliability and maintenance is just one of these — powerful, but just one. Production wants a new piece of equipment to replace a 60-year-old one; quality wants to purchase new inspection equipment to improve our defect rate and open up new markets; safety wants new machine guarding; environmental wants a new waste oil treatment facility, citing high maintenance cost and lost reclamation; and commercial wants to add a new product line. Each of these has a strong business case, and all want resources. Hidden in each opportunity are department and indi- vidual creditability ratings. Forewarning, this may sting a little bit: did the plant manager and/or leadership team reject your analysis of the business impact of a strong lubrication program, or did they really evaluate the creditability of the leadership team within maintenance and reliability? Creditability is most often the deciding factor. Rarely do you have a sales problem getting