A reliability-based lubrication maintenance strategy requires a well-balanced program of proactive, preventive, predictive, and reactive contamination control measures. No plan, person, or piece of equipment is perfect, but incorporating a few simple techniques into your maintenance schedule can help you stay two steps ahead of equipment failure due to lubrication or filtration contaminants.

It’s estimated that lubrication-related equipment failures cost U.S. businesses as much as $1 trillion per year. Losses accrue in several areas, including:

• Lost productivity
• Costly reactive maintenance
• Scheduled and unscheduled downtime

Precision Lubrication Decreases Maintenance Downtime

One common cause of equipment downtime is bearing failure. Amazingly, it is estimated that bearings fail at the end of their natural fatigue limit less than 10 percent of the time. That means that more than 9 out of 10 bearing failures are premature and, therefore, also avoidable.

Downtime maintenance shutdowns are labor intensive. Determining your staffing needs can be one of the most challenging aspects of planning a cost-effective downtime maintenance project.

You must assess the skills and capabilities of your in-house workforce and determine where supplementing them will aid your team in successfully completing all the scheduled work. You must also ensure skilled professionals are readily available to quickly handle the unforeseen tasks that inevitably arise during even the best-planned shutdowns.

Where to Find Skilled Workers to Bridge the Skills Gap

U.S. manufacturing firms continue to be hit hard by a shortage of skilled workers in industrial maintenance. The struggle to fill job openings with qualified candidates has resulted in a growing, profit-eating chasm known as the “skills gap” -- the gulf between the higher level of training, knowledge and experience employers need in their workers versus the skills their current workforce actually possess.