Has it ever occurred to you that it was necessary to specifically ask your OEM to add modern lubrication to the bill-of-material when you purchase equipment from him?

Have you ever thought about selecting and specifying equipment based on life expectancy and life-cycle cost as opposed to just the initial cost?

Maybe this is a more familiar scenario: Your OEM includes high-performance filters, breathers and modern sampling hardware as standard items on its equipment.

However, your bargain-hunting purchasing agent perceives this as “building the ticket” and asks how much less the equipment would cost without these items. After getting a better price (his goal), the purchasing agent replies, “good, sell it to us without the premium filters, breathers and modern sampling hardware.”

Many purchasing agents earn bonuses based on their performance in driving down the cost of the equipment they purchase. However, these agents are never asked to pay back their bonuses when later this same equipment experiences high maintenance costs and frequent failures.

A better purchasing strategy for companies is to minimize the life cycle cost of ownership. When you buy cheap you often are buying problems. Compounding the issue, once a lowest price specification is in place, companies tend to buy the same problems again and again.

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When it comes to modern concepts in the field of lubrication and applied tribology, many users these days are far more sophisticated than those who are designing and building the machines they operate.

This lack of sophistication by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) is very evident when you see what’s not included with the sale of new machinery. One could assume that what’s missing from the machine and its documentation is functionally missing from the knowledge and awareness of the engineers and builders of this equipment. Ignorance is not bliss. The same is true for complacency.

Reliability needs to have shared responsibility. It must be fixed in the DNA of the machine as well as in the minds of operators and maintainers. It’s like a reliability chain; every link in the chain must be equally strong in order for the chain’s full length to bear the load.

Machinery Lubrication magazine is primarily devoted to advanced concepts in lubrication from a user’s perspective, more specifically lubrication-enabled reliability. Users not only have a significant influence on machine reliability during operation but also by what is being done (or not done) by equipment builders to “ready” machines for optimum reliability. They want the machine’s design to have an implanted genetic code that enables reliability.

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The lubricant Optimum Reference State (ORS) is a critical concept in the journey to world-class lubrication and enhanced machine reliability. In short, it is the prescribed state of machine configuration, operating conditions and maintenance activities required to achieve and sustain specific reliability objectives. Lubrication excellence is achieved when the current state of lubrication approaches that of the Optimum Reference State. If you don’t understand the ORS, you probably don’t understand the most fundamental concepts in machine reliability.

Lubrication attributes of the ORS are not widely known by equipment builders, lubricant suppliers and maintenance organizations. Many user organizations falsely conclude that their machines are already fitted with the necessary accessories and components that enable reliability to be achieved. Sadly, of the hundreds of machine service manuals I’ve seen in recent years, it is rare to find practices described close to the ORS. In a typical plant, it is equally rare to see machines fitted with ORS-compliant lubrication components and technicians performing ORS-compliant lubrication.

There are many different attributes of the Optimum Reference State. These attributes relate to people preparedness, machine preparedness, precision lubricants, precision lubrication and oil analysis. Achieving the ORS almost always involves change or modifications. For instance, you can’t get optimum filtration unless you install the optimum filter. You can’t have optimum oil samples unless you install ORS-compliant sample valves in the optimum location. Then, of course, you need to pull the sample using ORS-compliant procedures at ORS-compliant frequencies.

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In the world of maintenance, there are two kinds of companies – those who are modernizing their maintenance programs and those who will. Companies on the trailing edge face one of two risks depending on their industry and geography:

Losing revenue to competition as demand for production capacity heats up.

Losing profits to competitors who export from low-cost labor markets abroad.

Averting these risks requires a process called change. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Change can be evolutionary or revolutionary. Evolutionary change is incremental, more manageable and lower in risk.

However, for those laggards who have put off the inevitable, time may be running out. For them, the end to business- as-usual has arrived.

Catching up to already fast-paced competitors who are further along in the maintenance evolution may require sizeable short-term budgets for training, new tools and knowledge technologies.

Some of these companies may have to leapfrog over evolutionary and move straight to revolutionary. This would involve rapidly reinventing their work environment, maintenance practices, metrics and culture.

Instead of controlled and well-managed incremental improvements, breakthrough innovations may be required instead. Revolutionary change can be disruptive and often a source of stress and distress in the workplace.

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Try this simple experiment. With notepad in hand, go out into your plant and walk around a sampling of your most critical machines. These are the ones that have high probability of failure and/or the greatest consequences of failure. They are also known as show-stoppers and, as such, generally merit a disproportionate allocation of reliability and maintenance resources.

Next, on your notepad make a list of all the lubrication-related enhancements that have been implemented on these same machines since they were commissioned. Take special note of those that have been applied in the past five years. Solicit any amount of help (from old-timers, for instance) you need to flesh out your list.

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We’ve all seen change that was well-intentioned and purposeful. Yet most examples of change are not sustained over time and sadly cycled back to the ways of the past. The cause of this seems to resemble a powerful magnet that’s imbedded in every organization.

This magnet fights the positive forces of change. As soon as these forces weaken or lose focus, the magnet powers up and takes over. Before long, the business-as-usual beast has made its return.

Does this sound familiar? I’ve certainly seen it, and you most likely have, too. Remember those New Year’s resolutions? We know that all progress depends on change, yet change is not really change without a fail-safe plan to sustain it over multiple business cycles.

The need for this is especially true for transformational change due to the scale and magnitude of the effect on an organization. The process is often referred to as change management. Change must be enabled, and so does sustainability.

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One of the best examples of courage is the man who asks to hear what he doesn’t want to hear. While it’s human nature to fear or dread bad news, the wisest among us will frequently ask for it. Why? Because winners change what losers want to leave the same.

Change starts by asking or investigating what’s wrong. This quest begins the assessment stage of programmatic transformations in reliability. Assessments are also referred to as audits, surveys, benchmarking and gap analysis. It can’t stop there. The next step is equally difficult and perhaps moves you out of your comfort zone. You must accept or acknowledge what is wrong. Many people instinctively want to play defense. You’ve seen how they respond during a substance-abuse intervention. Denial may even lead to lashing out at others to shift focus. Tunnel vision and denial impair real progress.

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For any given machine, how critical is its reliability? What if it failed suddenly and catastrophically?

What would be the consequences – lost production, expensive repairs, fatality? Criticality is the logical starting point for all reliability initiatives.

There are many different ways to enhance reliability and improve the quality of maintenance. The best options should be risk-based. After all, if it doesn’t reduce risk, why do it? Why spend an incremental dollar to enhance a machine’s reliability if it doesn’t yield multiple dollars in return?

There’s also priority. What should be done first, second and third, and what should not be done at all? How do you know which machines return big dollars for enhanced reliability, which machines return marginal dollars and which machines return nothing at all?

Once you understand machine criticality and a machine’s risk profile, you can work smarter to customize improvements. For guidance, look to the Pareto principle, which states that 20 percent of the machines cause 80 percent of the reliability problems. Which machines are these?

In addition, consider that 20 percent of the causes of failure are responsible for 80 percent of the occurrences of failure. Which causes are these? It’s about precision – precision maintenance and precision lubrication. It’s also knowing how to make wise, risk-informed choices.

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The hot stove effect was first given to learning and management science by Mark Twain. He observed that if a cat happens to jump on a hot stove, he will never jump on a hot stove again. This of course is a good thing. However, not so good is the fact that he will not jump on a cold stove either, or perhaps anything the bears the slightest resemblance to a stove

Many of us still harbor frightful childhood memories of attempts to ride a bicycle or learning to swim. Yet despite our scrapes, bruises and fear, most of us prevailed in mastering these simple skills. It is sometimes stated that perfection begins with imperfection and we’ve all heard that practice makes perfect. Imagine the number of dropped baseballs needed for the average child to learn how to play catch. But suppose, if after just one missed swing of a bat a young little leaguer tells his coach, “I’m not very good at baseball so I’m not going to play it any more.”

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