Machinery Lubrication

ML_July_August_2017_Digital

Machinery Lubrication magazine published by Noria Corporation

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believing it will help them and the company. This training also provides an opportunity for feedback and can identify overlooked obstacles or weaknesses in the plan. The equipment may need preparation, too. Retrofits, such as adding oil sampling ports, can expedite the sampling process and free up many maintenance hours. If nothing else, the equipment list needs to be updated in your computerized maintenance manage - ment system (CMMS) and oil analysis provider's files. Grade Progress and Share the Wins The best way to accelerate the adoption of a new program is to measure the progress and share the results. Necessary first steps, like the retrofits, training and list management steps mentioned previously, can get bogged down and delayed without a guiding hand directing (and sometimes pushing and pulling) them along. One way to hurry the transition along is to "grade" the progress of each section/location/division and review them out in the open. Peer pressure and friendly competition can go a long way toward motivating slow adopters. Once the oil analysis program is up and running, your time can be devoted to providing additional motiva- tion, such as sharing major saves, recognizing sampling compliance or establishing best practices. Show the Financial Justification It is important to capture information about maintenance and replacements that were avoided due to oil analysis. A lot of time can be saved when information is documented in the moment. Esti- mating the costs and time spent on projects can be difficult, especially if months have passed. Your management software or even a simple spreadsheet can track the hours spent and the cost of parts for each project. Multiply the hours spent conducting repairs by the average labor rate or burden rate and add in the part costs to estimate what was spent on an individual repair. To evaluate the program as a whole, add in the cost of oil analysis testing and the labor spent collecting samples. By comparing this to the cost of complete unit replace- ment or more involved repairs, you can calculate the immediate return on investment (ROI). A more advanced method of calculating ROI would be to factor in the cost of downtime to your company. This requires a lot of coordination with the production department, and this data isn't always available to maintenance divisions. Make Decisions Using Data The final step to integrating oil analysis into a maintenance program is to take advantage of the sample result data as a whole. Basic programs just review individual results for unexpected wear. This will definitely save equipment and reduce downtime, but all your past results contain a lot of statistics that can be mined for even more savings. Oil analysis providers can sort and filter specific results from your data and compile them into a management report. A wide variety of reports are possible, and the helpfulness of each depends on the individual's position in the maintenance program. For example, having a daily list of high-severity maintenance recommendations is extremely useful for maintenance managers looking to assign work to technicians. The senior maintenance leadership for a national company will find little use for such a list, but they might want to see a monthly pie chart with the percentage of each severity. The most sophisticated use of oil analysis data and management reports will aid strategic, companywide decisions with scatter- grams and Pareto charts. Identify the types of equipment that break down the most, extend oil drains with minimal risk by finding the threshold where severity levels spike and make purchasing deci- sions based on which makes and models perform the longest before maintenance/replacement is required. Create a Partnership Each company is different, and an oil analysis program can be easily customized to deliver superior results. Sample bottle cleanli- ness, flagging limits, report delivery options, computer system integration and automatic management report subscriptions are just a few of the options that can be adapted to improve an oil analysis program. In this regard, an oil analysis company is more like a service provider than a simple supplier. www.machinerylubrication.com | July - August 2017 | 21 ML

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