Unit operators spend more time with the machines than anyone else in maintenance, and they can play an essential role in driving a successful lubrication excellence program.

They can be the “continuous monitoring tools” that detect any issues arising between lubrication route intervals. Operators can alert the maintenance crew about any signs of lubrication system malfunctions at early stages, enabling them to take proper actions and prevent possible downtime and production loss!

This mission is easy because it takes little effort and training to qualify the operators to perform that role.

All it needs is a training course to provide general awareness about lubrication basics and what “good” looks like regarding lubrication system components.

Field operators with basic lubrication knowledge can promptly identify and detect issues and report them back to maintenance. This can significantly help prevent critical equipment failures and production downtime. However, it should be well-stated that this introductory course does not intend to teach field operators how to perform lubrication tasks for the equipment!

The following is a list of tasks the unit operators can be trained to do as part of an Operator-Driven Reliability (ODR) Program. These tasks can be the material of any basic lubrication training course, which can later be added to the operator’s log sheets:

• Detect any visible oil leaks through shaft oil seals and gaskets.
• Detect any abnormal oil leak around breathers’ connections, reservoirs, tubing, or sampling connections.
• Recognize different types of sight glasses. Check oil levels or any local low-oil level alarms on critical machines.
• Ensure oil level indicators/sight glasses are working correctly and not stained or broken.
• Check for any premature color change in desiccant breathers.
• Maintain proper oil cleanliness level for the machines and remove contaminants.
• Take proper precautions during the washdown of equipment or floor to avoid slippage hazards.
• Add a suitable amount of oil for equipment that reaches a critically low oil level, especially for sites with limited maintenance resources or when no maintenance crew can intervene in such emergency work. For such situations, additional training/qualification will be required to:
  • Train the operators on essential oil addition, color-coding, and contamination control techniques.
  • Prepare a lubrication cabinet with color-coded oil dispensers for each plant’s most common oil types. This cabinet should be located near the process area and readily accessible, owned, and maintained by the operators. The maintenance team must audit these remote cabinets for cleanliness and housekeeping compliance.

A successful lubrication program must have the proper organization in place. The correct lubrication functions help implement and sustain a robust precision lubrication program that provides value to the maintenance organization and the company. It is about more than assigning dedicated lubricators to perform the different lubrication activities. It’s also about designing the lubrication activities workflow, which eventually allows for streamlining the various lubrication tasks and workloads.

The first thing to think about is how to have the right and dedicated people to implement and sustain your lubrication program. This allows the lubricators to focus on performing their lubrication activities rather than distracting them with other day-to-day maintenance activities.

The lubrication team organization is highly dependent on the size of the site. For larger sites, it is highly recommended to:

1. Centralize the lubrication function into the reliability group.
2. Have a dedicated lubrication technician/s with the correct job descriptions, who are trained in modern lubrication skills and standards, and act as the champions of the lubrication program.

For small or medium-sized organizations that cannot hire a dedicated lubrication team, any of the following solutions may be considered:

1. Dedicated resources (when neither combined nor outside resources are possible)
2. Combined roles (For example, a mechanic is also the lead lubrication technician)
3. Use outside resources (e.g., lubrication service provider)

How to Measure the Staffing Requirements of your Lubrication Team

Now that you have set up your initial lubrication organization, how do you validate that you’ve done it correctly? Maintenance management may be able to help by preparing a report which includes annual lubrication working hours data to help measure staffing requirements. There are multiple ways to achieve this, including:

1. Use a set of duration values for lubrication tasks. This table may be generated from your CMMS database for previous lubrication jobs. Or use a benchmark for lubrication tasks duration that a specialized organization recognizes.
2. Use specialized lubrication management software (if any) to tabulate the work hour requirements and generate reports to show annual assigned hours and annual hours required to accomplish the lubrication work.

Designing a lubrication organization correctly can take time and effort, but if done correctly, it will pay dividends long into the future.