The Cost of Poor Lubrication Management

Being proactive with your lubrication programme can reduce the number of emergency repairs on your mechanical assets, alleviating pressure on your maintenance teams. This frees them to focus on important scheduled tasks, not urgent fixes.

Not being proactive, however, can result in negative impacts that spill through the entire company  - see below.

• Production Losses

  If you don’t maximise the uptime of assets by implementing a robust lubrication strategy, your company will struggle to meet production targets and orders.

• Incorrect Lubricant Use

  Lack of lubrication knowledge will make it unlikely you’re using the most suitable product or handling measures, triggering a risk of using the wrong lubricant for the job at hand.

• High Maintenance Costs

  Your maintenance costs will spin out of control, while capital equipment loses its long-term value through expensive, ad-hoc servicing, replacements and repairs.

• Increased Risk of Failure

  Using the wrong or contaminated lubricant reduces performance effectiveness through wasted energy, decreased component life and an increased risk of catastrophic failure.

Common Lubrication Errors

There are a number of common errors around lubrication maintenance that can cause your factory to grind to a halt:

• Not Managing the Basics

  It’s not just what you have, but how you use it. Even the most advanced condition monitoring tools will fail with a poor technique or insufficient training.

• Poor Storage & Handling

  Lubricants need to be stored in the right way – in the right environment and temperature –
  or their benefits will deplete. They can oxidise, degrade, or experience additive dropout and
  even have a shorter shelf life.

• Lack of Awareness

  Poor training or a lack of lubrication auditing mean staff are unprepared and unable to keep on top of their lubrication strategy (if one is even in place).

• Lack of Visibility

  Prevention is better than cure –but do you really know the condition of your components and lubricants? Without knowledge of potential problems, they’re near impossible to treat.

• Lack of Resource

  Without enough engineers with the right knowledge, lubrication is mismanaged.

• Poor Organisation

  If your lubricants aren’t stored in an organised manner, using colour coding and 5S methodology, you risk using the wrong product.

• Guesswork

  If you don’t know how much lubricant to use, you may use too little for it to be effective –and too much is even more damaging than not enough. You need the right measure, for the right machine, at the right time.