Reliability and lubrication excellence are behavioral sciences. Bearings don’t just die; they’re murdered by people. What can change behavior? It requires awareness and know-how.

Imagine two fishermen using fly rods in a trout stream. One is a professional middle-aged man decked out with all the latest gear. He has a flashy, new high-tech rod and reel. He wears the latest fashion-forward chest waders and a fishing vest sporting pockets bulging with every gizmo and gadget on the market. His fly box is well-stocked and neatly organized with hundreds of store-bought flies. Hanging “at the ready” down his back is his landing net. While he looks good and fishes hard, he does not catch any fish.

The second fisherman is a young country boy. His fly rod is simple and worn with age. He moves through the stream wearing boots and cargo shorts. He carries limited gear in a small waist-pouch consisting mostly of an assortment of nymphs and flies he tied himself. His rod is rigged with a basic system of line, leader and tippet. He selects, ties and casts his flies with the skill of an artist. He works the runs and riffles as he stalks his prey. Although his tools are simple, his technique is masterful. He also fishes hard, but in contrast to the first fisherman, he catches many trout.

The reason I tell this story is because I was the first fisherman. I was humbled and in awe of the young country boy as he worked the stream and showed off his skill. His advantage was not his tools, his desire, his natural ability or even luck. His gift was know-how gained from years of practice. Know-how enables skillful execution. Those with know-how exude confidence and take initiative. It’s the secret sauce that can turn an ordinary company into a world-class organization.

Like fly fishing, reliability requires a keen skill. You may have all the latest technology tools and can talk a good game, but there is no substitute for knowledge and skill. Like your lubricants and machines, know-how ages over time, too. Methods and techniques become stale and need to be refreshed. Training and education are the cornerstones of a reliability culture.

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As oil analysis specialists, we had much to offer; and in the past 10 years, we’ve given hundreds of seminars and graduated thousands of students. However, we’ve also learned much from these students, especially details on the purpose for their hunger for knowledge in oil analysis.

For starters, we’re aware that people quickly accepted the logic that oil was the life blood of their machines. And, just like human medicine, they also understood that analyzing the oil equated to a pathological study of machine health and disease. We’ve all seen how human lives are spared when early alerts to threatening ailments are found, enabling corrective measures to be taken.

Since the early 1960s, oil analysis has been routinely applied to in-service lubricants of operating machinery. The field has benefited from many advances in technologies and procedures along the way. We’ve also learned that success seems to depend heavily on acquiring key skills. Imagine trying to perform the job of a pathologist without attending medical school.

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Over the past ten years machine-dependent industrial sites have been reinventing their views about equipment maintenance – adopting a reliability focus. One might say that maintenance has always been about reliability, but today, more and more organizations are taking that connection very seriously, whereas in the past, the term reliability was- casually associated with the maintenance organization, which was primarily focused upon expediting parts and people to respond to failure. It could be said that machines were in charge of maintenance in the past – they decided when they were going to be worked on and what work was going to be done. Today’s maintenance organization seeks to take charge of maintenance and planning activities which decrease maintenance costs and associated waste, increase equipment reliability and, above all, increase the firm’s profit, share price and ability to compete in tough markets, especially global markets.

It is hard to imagine an effective process reliability assurance program without a strong emphasis on assuring the reliability of mechanical equipment. Likewise it is difficult to imagine an effective mechanical equipment reliability program without a strong lubrication program.

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Modern organizations call it raising the corporate IQ. Most of us have seen statistics on the lifetime financial returns of a college education. When it comes to education, a penny saved is not a penny earned, but rather green dollars forfeited – hundreds of them, all for the quest of a penny.

When it comes to lubrication and oil analysis, the unskilled and untrained workforce is deceivingly costly. These are the costs that go undiagnosed and unrecognized. What’s below the water’s surface and out of management’s view often has iceberg-like proportions.

So why does an organization look to the maintenance payroll to make cuts in the name of survival and prosperity? For one, it’s conspicuous, like the iceberg’s tip. It is also indirect labor that is perceived as easier to sacrifice. Managers often take a Parkinson’s Law view of indirect labor, “the manpower it takes to do a job is directly proportional to the manpower available to do the job.”

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TRAIN-YOUR-PEOPLE. Using oil analysis to enhance machine reliability is really too simple. Behind the appearances of complexity and vale of high science are the most basic of concepts. We can try to make it difficult, but why? With the right tools and a generous amount of training, a seemingly challenging task can be transformed into something almost mundane, but still powerful. It’s often said that if you think education is expensive, try ignorance. The high cost of ignorance affects all facets of life. In industry this includes maintenance, machine reliability, safety, lost production, and yes, oil analysis. Un-exploited opportunity is lost opportunity – a costly consequence of ignorance.

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2020 will be known as the year when the world was forced to shelter to protect human lives and to stem the spread of a potent, invisible enemy … COVID-19. The dire economic consequences of this virus are affecting us too. Is it possible there is a silver lining?

Some have used this life-disrupting period to find and leverage key opportunities, both personal and professional. This includes planning and making ourselves, our careers and businesses ready for the time when we emerge at the other end of chaos.

Honestly, there could hardly be a better time to prepare and adapt for the future that lies ahead. View it as a time to reload and recalibrate. We are transitioning through both forced and necessary changes to a new normal. Things will never be quite the same. The opportunity is there to become stronger and wiser. Of course, this includes the field of lubrication and reliability.

Training organizations worldwide are scrambling to advance educational options that align with this new normal. These include various forms of distance and e-learning that include virtual and mobile device deliverables. Lack of mobility from this pandemic does not have to mean a lack of productivity from lost time and wasted resources. It is our choice to be people of action and purpose. More now than before.

What follows are common questions and challenges related to the concept of training and its true value relative to actual and perceived costs. Is training a want or a need? Are the benefits real or imaginary? What is the tangible connection of training to machinery reliability, maintenance costs, productivity and profitability? Read on…

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