Lubrication Reliability through Base Line Auditing

Geoff Manley, General Manager, Lubrication Engineers Pty Ltd

Description

There is an old saying that states ‘if you do not know where you are going, then is doesn’t matter how you get there’.

While readily acknowledged as being critical to the overall operational reliability of industrial equipment, lubrication continues to be given minimal focus. Seen as easy and something that just happens, the number of failure events that can be directly related to poor lubrication practice continues to grow.

This poor state of affairs is easily reinforced by a study that was completed by Dr Jian Ding for a global mining company, which showed that if they could ‘take control’ and maintain acceptable quality of the Fuel, Lubricant, Air & Coolant used across their mobile and fixed plant, they would save > $500 Million per year. Not an insignificant value.

While readily acknowledged as being a great improvement opportunity, the issue for customers is often where do we start?

Lubrication Engineers have introduced a simple but extremely effective Base Line Auditing process that provides customers with a status report on where there processes sit against World Best Practice. More importantly it then provides a clear path to allow an improvement program to be initiated that can meet budget restraints, while still progressing the customer to a more acceptable condition.

Both short and long term plans are provided for, with regular review ensuring that plan stays on course.

Followed through, the program will deliver reliability improvements of 200 – 300%.

Takeaways

  1. Just how important lubrication is to the long term reliability of industrial equipment.
  2.  The ease with which lubrication improvement programs can be implemented.
  3. Short and long term scenarios that can be clearly costed and show the ROI potential.

Bio

Geoff is the General Manager of Lubrication Engineers Pty Ltd and has been involved in the maintenance industry for the past 40 years. While Geoff has been with Lubrication Engineers for the past 8 years, prior to this he spent 20 years with Pall Corporation, helping companies understand and implement world class cleanliness management solutions across a wide range of industries. Now leading the team at Lube Eng. he continues to work closely with Australian industry, referencing first hand experiences to deliver best practice lubrication solutions for virtually all industries and applications across the country.