TABLE OF CONTENTS Lubrication management is the cornerstone of any engineered maintenance management approach or production / maintenance continuous improvement effort. Designing and implementing any improvement initiative is about managing people who manage assets. This is best achieved through understanding the dynamics surrounding Planning and Scheduling of maintenance work. We learned in Section 2.1 Cost of Maintenance, that performing proactive work such as preventive and predictive work is three times less costly than performing unplanned reactive work. To understand what we need to prevent and predict, we must first understand what currently fails on a non-random basis, and more importantly, why it fails. Incredibly, the 1986 NRC study on Enhancing Reliability and Efficiency Reduction of Friction and Wear concluded that oil contamination is the main cause of wear and friction in lubricated systems, yet many of the respondents chose to ignore or not use tactics and products to stop contamination. It further concluded that over 77% of all respondents believed friction and wear could be reduced, but felt their current levels of friction and wear was acceptable! With over 70% of all mechanical failures attributable to ineffective lubrication, why do so many maintenance departments perform so poorly in this area?
Good preventive maintenance requires up-front analysis of failure just ask WHY? 5 times and the root cause will be evident. From this analysis we are able to formulate an approach to preventing the occurrence from happening, or at the very least, controlling the situation by being prepared. Failure prevention requires...
