TABLE OF CONTENTS Maintenance is BIG BUSINESS! In 1979, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) performed a landmark study in which it estimated that over $200 billion U.S. was spent annually on maintenance in North America. Furthermore, approximately one third of this expenditure was determined unnecessary!
Since 1979, maintenance costs have escalated at an estimated rate greater than 10% per annum. Almost thirty years later, that places maintenance costs at well over a trillion U.S. dollars, with unnecessary expenditures at close to half a $Trillion US!
Maintenance, and in particular the effects of poor lubrication, is still one of the few remaining areas of a company s expenditure that can be drastically improved upon. In the 1990 s the Dupont company stated that maintenance is the single largest controllable cost within a plant, this statement remains as true today as it did then. Maintenance is an unavoidable cost that must be paid for directly out of company profits and can be managed from a variable state to a controlled state with the use of engineered controls and practices. Good Lubrication Practices (GLP) are foundational to any structured approach aiming to increase equipment life, and significantly reduce direct (repair costs) and indirect (downtime) maintenance costs. Because of its impact on equipment well being and reliability, lubrication must be the anchor of any structured PM program.
P.M. is a common acronym used to denote Preventive Maintenance, Predictive Maintenance, Pro-active Maintenance, Planned Maintenance, or Productive maintenance, all of which include lubrication as arguably the...
