Industrial lubricant cleanliness has a direct impact on equipment life and the efficiency of your manufacturing operation. Portable offline oil filtration is a useful decontamination solution for transfer of new fluids into your system, oil recycling, acute contamination treatment, or as part of a scheduled maintenance program. Moreover, equipment such as kidney loop filtering units are put into full-time service and their benefits extended as integrated, permanent solutions. Whether portable or permanent, lubrication maintenance technicians are more commonly relying upon the convenience, effectiveness, and versatility of offline filtration for optimal fluid cleanliness.

They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and there is perhaps no place that is truer than in the lubrication industry. That's why it's important to learn proper lubricant and oil storage techniques. Though it is sometimes easy to overlook or deem proper storage a low priority, taking a few easy steps now goes a long way in preserving your materials and preventing degradation in the future.

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.

“New” doesn’t necessarily equate to “clean” when it comes to industrial oils and lubricants. Even though they may look pure, new oils require special care and handling to detect and avoid contamination.

We talked to Tony Arenas, Operations Manager at Y2K Fluid Power, about new oil practices. Tony gave the type of deeply detailed insights and tips that can only come from extensive professional experience and knowledge. Y2K designs and manufactures a complete line of filtration and fluid conditioning products for removing liquid and solid particulate contamination in hydraulic and lubricating oil systems.

Have you dealt with a bearing failure recently? If so, what were the consequences in terms of downtime, costly emergency repairs and other expenses?

Too often, avoidable breakdowns happen with such regularity that they are eventually looked at as normal and natural. Even with regular monitoring, it is true that bearings may occasionally wear out before they are replaced. However, it is possible to avoid many bearing failures with a well-conceived lubrication program complimented by timely parts replacements.

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.

Your plant’s success depends on every person involved in its operations and maintenance, including contractors. Whether you’ve hired third-party professionals to supplement your workforce during a scheduled maintenance downturn, or you’ve added contractors to your team permanently, their efforts and competencies help fuel your entire team’s progress.

When it comes to equipment maintenance, is your operation relatively more reactive or proactive? Too often, valuable assets are put at risk because maintenance budgets are thin. When this occurs, maintenance is primarily a reaction to costly breakdowns. Stop-gap measures get the equipment up and running, but at a cost.

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.