Publisher's Note

It is often said that while the bearing is the heart of your (rotating) equipment, the lubricant is considered to be the blood. The health of your blood is as life threatening as the quality of the lubricant, whether they are oils or greases. Bad lubricant quality is extremely harmful for the health of machine components. Lubricant quality in the Lubrication Reliability Programme is a matter of managing the selected lubricants in the best possible way bearing in mind the 6 Lubrication Rights- the Right Type, the Right Time, the Right Quantity, the Right Place, the Right Way, and the Right Condition. It has been proven many times by independent organizations that poor lubrication practices are responsible for over 43 percent of bearing and machine failures. Here asset managers have sinned against one or more of the 6 Lubrication Rights.

Lubrication Reliability (LR) is a combination of managing best practices, tools and strategies. To start a new LR strategy (or just implement one or more of its components) it is crucial to assess the actual lubrication management situation. Evaluation and benchmarking will disclose actual flaws in the implementation and stress out the weak points in the fields of: strategies, cleanliness & contamination control, lube supply, expertise and others. No maintenance organisation today should manage its activities without proper assessment. Lubrication is a very specialized field of maintenance and thus dedicated Lubrication Management is required to be implemented.

Sometimes even small quantity of cross contamination can result in catastrophic failure. It does not take huge investments to well identify or colour-code lubricants, dispensing equipment and lube points on machinery to avoid malicious cross-contamination. While identification is imperative, lubricant inspection should be a continuous worry. It happens every day that machine components like gearboxes run dry of oil or grease. Oil Levels are overseen, are too dirty to inspect, or are not even included in the technician’s inspection route.

New oils commonly have a higher contamination level than recommended by the machine supplier. Cleanliness control of new and stored lubricants should be the focus. As it is a basic issue, with small investments but huge return. It’s all about improving the quality of new lubricants and protecting these lubes from environmental contamination like moisture, dirt, chemicals and so on. Today many innovative solutions are available to properly store and condition lubes: the best have dedicated tanks with pumps and filters for on-line filtering, proper identification and have protections like desiccant breathers. Systems that do not work in this way are just bad practice.

Oil Dispensing is an art. Oil cans need to have these basic requirements: fully sealed, translucent for inspection, colour-coded and identified and adapted to the application and fluids, preferably made of plastic to avoid rusting. Greases are difficult to clean up once contaminated. The use of cartridges or automatic lubrication systems is preferred.

No Lubrication Reliability programme should start with a group of people not having the right skills and training. Technicians, reliability engineers, foremen and managers will have to be educated at their level. Plenty of good training programmes are available out there as well.

We would like to thank our readers for the encouraging response to our previous edition’s cover story – “The power of using multiple technologies for machine inspections” and other articles. Our current issue’s cover story “101 ways to improve your lubrication program” will help our readers to find numerous ideas to develop a world-class lubrication program. We welcome readers to participate by sending their feedback & contributing articles and case studies.

Warm regards,

Udey Dhir