Suzy Jamieson

International Council

for Machinery Lubrication

(IC ML)

suzyj@lubecouncil.org

Australia

Time and time again as I attend conferences, fellow presenters report on their organization’s experiences in the journey thus far. With encouraging figures and trended case studies they prove with real world examples from actual plants, what the proactive maintenance strategies, reliability centred approaches and emerging into mainstream asset management philosophies promise and promote. Heads nod in agreement when images of the “before” practices flicker in slide presentations.

Examples of “How safe does it make you feel?” as Maintenance Evangelist Joel Leonard would put it, when speaking of the “Maintenance Crisis” the world is facing are easy to come around. The images make one shudder in anticipation of the possible negative outcomes of such circumstances surrounding the maintenance and management of assets. Assets which, in many cases, carry an enormous potential risk not only to the operation of the plants in which they are found but to the very lives of the people operating them. Too often this is extended to the communities surrounding their sites – yet these poor practices are commonly found even in large corporations supposedly publicly subscribing to “social responsibility”. Even, sadly, ones located in developed countries.

But let us not be all gloom, as it is encouraging to see the focus being increasingly put in reliability, health & safety and environmental aspects. More so, in social responsibility, regarding the resulting negatives affect to not only the plants, but the personnel and communities surrounding unreliable and illmanaged assets. There is certainly a crisis in asset management and maintenance at hand and it is being displayed over and over in the media, which is the only one making a gain in the different catastrophic failures and their related world impact of recent years.

Equipment failure-induced disasters is nothing new, however the live and in-colour display of the impact they have in the lives of people around them and society at large, is now instantly available worldwide, thanks to modern mediums, digital media included. I like to believe that the human race as a whole is “growing” in its humanity and that seeing the devastating effects, not only to the organizations and their bottom lines, but mainly to the humans and the environment – live and instantly displayed before our eyes – has thankfully awaken a sense of urgency in discovering the causes and avoiding the repetition, of such failures and their dire consequences.

Kitten Up in a Tree

I am reminded of an old TV commercial I used to watch in the US, featuring the fire department and even the SWAT team being deployed to an “emergency scene” of apparent chaos and a crowd of watching bystanders. The viewers of this commercial suddenly realize, the “emergency” was the case of a kitten up a tree. Sirens are going, SWAT members coming out, firearms in hands, on a “move, move, move” style, when someone in the watching crowd suddenly says in a heavy foreign accent: “How about a ladder? The camera swaps to the image of a simple ladder laying there, available to all…the add concludes with the camera on the fire-fighters and SWAT team members, all looking at each other in surprised glances, as to the simplicity of the proposed solution.

Granted these equipment failure -induced world disasters are not a kitten up a tree; often their root cause certainly is – that is the saddest part of it all – the % of avoidable, “waiting to happen” disasters everywhere around us. When I present case studies and show before/after pictures of the pursuit of excellence in lubrication and oil analysis programmes, there is always, sadly, a great show of many hands going up in agreement on the “before” circumstances, as equalling the lubrication practices within their organizations. It doesn’t matter if I am speaking in North America, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East or Europe – the responses are often identical – embarrassed chuckles, facial expressions of “oops, that’s us” and nods of heads to how unacceptable it all is – yet very few hands can go up when asked if the “after” pictures exemplifying best practices reflect their organizations. Now…again…we are often talking about developed countries.

Too many times, we are talking about delegates from large, known organizations. These are organizations that seem serious about Asset Management and Reliability practices, some of them even actively participating in M&R societies and Asset Management Councils around the world and educating their management teams on the latest models and philosophies within reliability and asset management. So I ask you: where are they going wrong? How come after thousands of dollars and countless hours of executive education they are still presenting the symptoms of very precarious maintenance – and more specifically in my focus area – lubrication practices? Why are we witnessing increasingly major incidents around the globe with such grave consequences?

Let’s get back to the foreign man in the crowd in that old commercial. Two points here, which I am happily hearing reinforced time and time again in industry: firstly, the SWAT team is not ideally the one that will ultimately get your kitten off the tree. Secondly, go back to basics, keep it simple. In other words, despite the need and validity of educating upper and middle management, it is the hands-on people, the ones “by the kitten”: the operators and maintenance technicians that will spot the kitten up (or hopefully about to go up) a tree in your plant – they are your eyes and ears and your first line of defence. They know the kitten – often times turned into a tiger when ill asset management and poor, reactive maintenance practices are the norm. And taming a kitten is way easier than taming a tiger.

 So keep your asset not only a kitten, but a kitten in a controlled environment for that matter, with no tree hazards around. The bottom line is that education of the upper layer of the organization without proper qualification and assessment as well as respectful support by management of your technicians is bad for business and a waste of the organization’s time and money.

 And lastly, to quote another old commercial slogan “just do it!” All the theoretical learning of your management team won’t be worth a dime if the people responsible for implementation and operation of the new programmes don’t see it through, competently and with a commitment to success. Buy in by all parties, qualification and assessment of needed skills in all layers of the effort – especially of the personnel responsible for the day-to-day related activities – is a must. And something humans despise but it is essential: letting go of inertia and hanging on to steadfast, gold old “just do it” and sticking to it.

No Babushkas with Grease Guns

I have been preaching in industry for over 10 years on the criticality of the lubrication function and of the needed skill level of lubrication personnel to the maintenance, reliability and overall asset management efforts. At first it seemed to fall in deaf ears. It is delightful to finally hear, 10 years on, more and more fellow speakers repeating that going back to basics and keeping it simple works wonders! Experts in broader areas, addressing multiple aspects of reliability, health and safety and asset management, these speakers resound the old mantra of ours: “fastening, properly lubricating, aligning and balancing your mechanical equipment will avoid a huge percentage of mechanical failures”. This renews the energy for what feels so many times to me like an uphill battle. Convincing top levels of the organizations of the value and criticality of skilled and certified lubrication and oil analysis professionals in place of “oilers” is no easy task. Or, as I lovingly heard recently from a Russian colleague that “certified technicians are no babushkas with grease guns”. They are truly not.

I have come to call the unskilled oiler, loose in our plants, going around with the grease gun in hand and no proper knowledge level, about to squirt grease one too many times into a bearing as “armed and dangerous”. The greatest lesson of that old kitten up a tree add campaign is that sometimes, we tend to complicate things, or value more seemingly complex things, taking simple ones for granted. Because the ladder is such a simple tool compared to other possibilities and because it is right there, readily available, it ends up being taken for granted in our modern society of grandiose.

The be$t kept secret in maintenance is what you already have right there: the pair of eyes, ears and the brain in each technician already standing by your “kitten”. If you respect, support, train, certify and fairly compensate your lubrication personnel in light of the criticality of their role, I can assure you the gain and savings are many times – and I mean many times that of the cost. Remember that every dollar saved in maintenance goes straight to the profit line. Your technicians have a lot more “control” over your profit margin than you would like to think.

Consider this: it is common practice in industry to have reactive behaviour and reward maintenance technicians for coming in at odd hours to repair breakdowns. We reward the machine failures with overtime for the technicians and a great big thank you pat on the back. That is about the only time in fact that we in industry remember to tell a technician what a good job he/ she does. When the machine goes on working, no recognition, especially true when it comes to lubrication technicians, normally at the bottom of the totem pole and worst paid crew members.

Yet, industry figures put the correlation between avoidable poor lubrication practices and mechanical failure, though varied, always as significant: 60 % of all mechanical failures due to improper lubrication practices according to one study, 50 % of bearing failures due to lubrication issues, says another study, 90 % reduction in wear related failures on a sample company that improved practices.

One case study showed savings over US$760,000 in a year, another study concluded 82 % of wear was caused by particles – often introduced by faulty lubrication/ contamination control practices, in another case study engine wear was reduced by 70 %... the samples are endless and the figures go from US$300,000 saved in a single instance where a bold call was made by a skilled lubrication/oil analysis in-house team to go against OEM recommendation and continue running an allegedly “dusted” engine, to over 50 % of the yearly net income of a mine lost in one incidence related to faulty lubrication, whilst other example estimates an annual savings of 5 to 20 % of equipment cost when oil analysis programmes are used in conjunction with proactive maintenance…

$avings

The amount of $s to be saved is mind-boggling. The steps to get to these improved reliability, improved productivity, improved safety, improved profit margin, improved stock prices by default and yes, even improved CEO bonuses are all as common sense as trying a stepladder first…yet, here we are…industry forgets the impact of (im)proper lubrication practices goes beyond just lubrication consumption. We are talking parts, labour, production time and output, energy consumption, disposal, environmental impact, safety impact, perceived company image and market opinion, it goes on and on…

The steps for correcting these practices and achieving excellence at world class level regarding lubrication programmes are as surprisingly simple as a ladder versus a SWAT team deployment. First, identifying a champion for the cause and providing commitment to education and skill competency. surprisingly simple as a ladder versus a SWAT team deployment: First, identifying a champion for the cause and providing commitment to education and skill competency. Then, supporting maintenance culture change via management support and buyin followed by implementation of proactive and precision maintenance/lubrication practices including contamination exclusion, removal and control.

Technology integration and use of information technology are critical as are use of standardize procedures in the areas of: lubricant selection, consolidation and performance assessment; lubricant storage, handling, application, safety and conservation. Finally, a mentality geared towards continuous improvement via lessons learned, with programme performance metrics and reporting in place. And primordial, continuing education and professional development of the staff a constant.

My hope is that with the advance of impending international standards in Asset Management, a more holistic approach will finally be in place. The upcoming ISO 55000 series is promising. It calls with certainty for direct participation of C level executives in all aspects of AM, including training in the related subjects. Hopefully this will bring together to a roundtable not only maintenance, but the people with the power, from procurement and financials to logistics and operations, at management levels. Let us hope they conclude that, contrary to what they believed all these years, a little cost saving/corner cutting in the areas of lubrication, condition monitoring and inspections actually proves very expensive in the long run. As old timers wisdom called “the cheap turns more expensive”.

In summary, when it comes to the oil being used in your lubricated assets, it is a simple matter of using the right lubricant, in the right quantity, in the right place at the right time and keeping it clean, dry and cool, systematically and systemically. This may sound daunting, but with the correct skill level of your personnel, correct attitude, buy in and “stick-to-it-ness”, many companies have reaped the many benefits from lubrication excellence, despite the still prevalence in industry of disregard for the critical role of the lubrication and thus the value of the lubrication professional.

With the MIT reporting 6 to 7 % of the $240 million of the GDP being used to repair mechanical wear and 60 % of that mechanical wear being due to improper lubrication, it beats me, with over 15 billion reasons to address lubrication practices, why we’re still deploying SWAT teams to rescue kittens up a tree, so I’ll say again… how about a ladder?

»»Who is the author? Suzy Jamieson is the Executive Director of the International Council for Machinery Lubrication. She has a Bachelor’s in Communication/ Marketing and has been involved in industry for over twenty years. Suzy is a delegate for Australia to ISO where she is currently the project leader for ISO standards under development on the qualification and assessment of lubrication and oil analysis personnel, under TC108/SC5/WG4. Suzy is also a member of Standards Australia’s ME- 087 Committee and of the SMRP, Society for Maintenance and Reliability Professionals, currently serving in the SMRP Professional Development Team. Suzy can be reached at suzyj@lubecouncil.org.