A few years ago, someone mentioned to me that many of his machines were not good candidates for oil analysis because they used little oil that wasn’t worth saving. He added that by the time you flushed the sampling port and pulled a proper oil sample, you’ve almost done an oil change. Why bother with oil analysis?

I’m sure you recognize the misguided purpose of oil analysis in the mind of this individual. While oil analysis can certainly aid in better timed oil changes, it has so much more to offer. In fact, for machines that are mission-critical, the cost of changing the oil is small potatoes in comparison to the value gained from averting a catastrophic machine failure.

If oil analysis was only about tracking the remaining useful life of the lubricant, only a fraction of the oil samples analyzed every year could be economically justified.

Think of the oil more as an information messenger of numerous failure modes and root causes of failure. As I’ve said many times, it’s hard for a machine to be in trouble without the oil knowing about it first. For most labs, the number of non-conforming samples from oil analysis will generally exceed 20 percent.

In other words, more than one out of every five samples has a reportable condition that requires a corrective response. For this reason, you must be prudent about which machines are selected for oil analysis as well as the sampling frequency.

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Do you know the six most expensive oil analysis tests? Maybe you do and maybe you’ve learned to tolerate them or simply didn’t register their true cost. For the maintenance organization seeking world-class status, you might call these the “tests of fire” because they often separate the winners from the users.

These six tests are expensive for many reasons but most often it’s because of lost opportunity. Thousands of organizations each year go through the motions of performing oil analysis and get little in return. Why? Often it’s the small things, the critical but seemingly insignificant elements, which have the largest impact on the value-generated potential of an oil analysis program.

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Is the cost of oil analysis really justified? Perhaps you’ve heard another rhetorical question. How long is a piece of string? The answer to both questions is the same – it depends. Oil analysis is justified only when the answers to specific questions about the oil and machine have sufficient value to offset the cost. Unfortunately, some users are unaware of the many questions that oil analysis can answer and as a result they gain only a fraction of the potential benefit from their oil analysis program.

Therefore before you design your oil analysis program, before you select a laboratory and before you develop test slates, create a list of value-generating questions that you want answered. Basically you want to reverse engineer your oil analysis program. You start with a list of the ideal oil analysis deliverables (answers to your important questions) and work backward. The list below is designed to help you develop your question set:

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Not long ago I read a magazine article on predictive maintenance that referred to oil analysis as a means to “time” an oil change. Sadly, no other application or benefit was mentioned. The author was obviously trying to give credit to the field but unknowingly diminished its importance and value. An opportunity was lost.

Many oil analysis programs are in need of renewal. A good place to start is to clear up some of the myths and folklore about what oil analysis is designed to do. We need to develop real understanding of how it is applied and its strategic role within a “world class” maintenance organization. The goals and mission will need clarity and definition too. Much of this has to do with knowledge building and learning from the successes of others. But it’s ongoing–a work in progress.

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