When I go into industrial plants and tell the Lubrication Team, aka, oilers and greasers, that they are Tribologists, I usually get a look of confusion on how they would fit in. When you first think of Tribology, your thoughts may immediately go to all the great PhD scientists who have excelled in this field, starting from the coining of the term by Dr. Peter Jost, the Father of Tribology.  

In a review by Enrico Cuilli of the University of Pia titled “Vastness of Tribology Research Fields and Their Contribution to Sustainable Development,” you see a graph that outlines all the areas that spin off from the original explanation of Tribology as shown in Figure1.  

At its core is the definition of Tribology as the science and engineering of interacting surfaces in relative motion, with a focus on friction, wear, and lubrication. It applies to everything from R&D to mechanical systems such as bearings and gears.

Industrial Tribology brings the maintenance and reliability teams into the Tribology family, putting to work “all the applications of tribology to the industrial products, manufacturing, and maintenance. CONGRATS, YOU ARE A TRIBOLOGIST!”

Looking at the areas that deliver the best R&D in Tribology and how they fit the production floor, there are three main areas of focus: lubrication, friction, and Tribochemistry.

Lubrication includes bearing selection, proper fluid film, and Machine components, requiring the gearbox, electric motor, or hydraulic system that best fits the application.

Friction is determined by the type of rolling, sliding, or static contact, the industry, what you are manufacturing or designing, and the Tribofailures, to determine the root cause of failure.

Lastly, as a tribochemistry field lubrication specialist, you must evaluate many products to determine the best lubricant for your application.

The table below (Figure 2) provides additional explanation of the various branches of tribology and the main subjects they cover. 

In Industrial Manufacturing Tribology, it also includes metal forming, maintenance, maintenance monitoring (KPI’s), and condition monitoring of lubricant health with oil analysis. The lab tribologist reviewing oil reports to determine additive strength, wear metal and contamination concentrations and sources, and oxidation levels can advise users on getting the full value and life from their lubricant. 

This will also assist your team in managing time to extend drain intervals, reduce labor costs, and allocate time to other lubrication/reliability projects. Tribology affects everything and everyone.

The goal for Tribologists on the research side is to understand, on the nano-level, the three main components of friction (lower), wear (eliminate), and lubrication (best formulations) to improve energy efficiency, life span of the asset, and increase performance.  This will not only make your company profitable (the cake) but also lower your carbon footprint (the icing on the cake).

If maintenance teams embrace this concept and communicate to management that they are one of the plant’s best assets, they could receive buy-in and support to expand and grow their proactive maintenance program with new equipment and training. The key to this is making sure you are documenting all increases in your production KPI’s and decreases in downtime to keep the management philosophy of “what have you done for me lately” concept addressed.

As we welcome you, the heroes of maintenance and reliability, please know that, as an Industrial Tribologist, you must have a desire to learn and grow every day in this field, and that you are a very important part of the company. You not only make them profitable but also lead the way in energy efficiency for every electric motor, gearbox, and hydraulic unit, and you create the “icing on the cake” as good stewards of the environment. To learn more about Tribology connect or join the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers. 

Reference:

Ciulli, E. Vastness of Tribology Research Fields and Their Contribution to Sustainable Development. Lubricants 2024, 12, 33. https://doi.org/10.3390/ lubricants12020033

In my recent article, “Improve The Reliability of Hydraulic Systems for Just Pennies A Day,” I used the term “creep to failure.” It describes mechanical systems that continue to work, albeit inefficiently, for extended periods despite suffering from disrespect, abuse, and lack of maintenance.

The forgiving nature of these systems promotes apathy in production and maintenance department attitudes toward system/component failure prevention, efficiency optimization, and service-life management. That apathy, in turn, can lead to significant or catastrophic failures at the least opportune times.

“Creep to Failure” systems are recognizable by their purposeful, built-in “weak-link” design elements, i.e., common elements that rely on engineered sacrificial components.

Often integral to the functional design, these critical, multi-function, sacrificial components are primarily engineered to protect their respective systems from premature wear due to poor setup, calibration, operating conditions, and, sadly, downright abuse.

As such, these components are inexpensive compared to the system they protect. And they must be checked and replaced once they’ve reached the end of their wear region or point of exhaustion.

The hydraulic fluid and filtration elements are the sacrificial components in hydraulic systems. Mechanical systems also employ lubricants and filtration to protect the moving surfaces. But unlike hydraulic systems, they employ sacrificial drive chains, sprockets, belts, and pulleys to transmit power.

These components serve not only to connect and transmit power but also to protect the driver and driven components by taking up/absorbing misalignment, vibration, and power surges within the transmission system.

Chain And Sprockets

Chain and sprocket sets are unique in that they also rely on the sacrificial nature of lubricants to remain clean, friction-free, and long-lasting.

Chains and sprockets are excellent torque transmitters and are tolerant of both heat and high loads. Custom-sized with little difficulty, they can accommodate long shaft-center distances and configurations not easily achieved with belt-driven systems or direct-drive gearing.

However, if not lubricated or cleaned regularly, chains and sprockets will wear rapidly and can fail catastrophically, causing great physical damage at speed.

Under regular operation, the outer surface of a chain’s pins and bushings connecting its links will “rub” against one other and create friction. This friction causes pin surfaces to wear and lose their rigidity to the point of fatigue failure.

Although it is technically possible for the chain link to “grow” in length slightly, the phenomenon known as “chain stretch” is actually elongation caused by material-wear loss on the pins connecting the links.

When wear occurs, the chain roller creeps up the sprocket teeth as it rolls over them. This, in turn, causes tooth wear, creates system vibration, and allows the chain to “jump” the sprocket teeth. The situation can be catastrophic when a timing chain connects two or more sequenced-driven systems.

Chain looseness and vibration will dramatically affect the machine’s energy efficiency. If allowed to deteriorate further, the chain can be ejected off the sprocket entirely, snap or wrap around a moving shaft, and cause significant secondary damage and/or loss of machine function, commonly referred to as downtime.

Gauging when to change out chains and sprockets requires examination of both components. Chain manufacturers recommend replacing the chain once it has reached a 1.5% elongation of its original length.

This can usually be determined using a vernier caliper to measure and note the distance over a minimum of 10 chain links.

For example, if a new chain measures 10 inches over a 10-link span, the allowable elongation before replacement will be 10 x 0.015 = 0.15 inches, or 10.15″ over a 10-link distance. (FYI: Most chain manufacturers sell a simple chain-link Go/No-Go measuring device that can indicate the elongation change point.) The shape of their teeth determines sprocket wear.

While maintaining chains and sprockets isn’t complicated or expensive, these sacrificial components require commitment and respect. The following points reflect a set of minimum maintenance requirements:

• Lubricate! Lubricate! Lubricate! Use a chain lubricant with tackifiers and creep agents that won’t fling off during rotation and will allow the oil to creep into the pin portion of the chain. NEVER USE DIRTY OR USED OIL.
• Investigate using a simple reservoir and brush-applied lubricator to oil the chain automatically.
• Regularly clean the chain with a wire brush, a purpose-built chain brush, a degreaser, or a purpose-built chain-cleaner attachment.
• Be sure to protect your chain and sprocket systems from contamination. Water and dirt can lead to contamination, wear, and rust.
• Make a simple set of Go/No-Go slip gauges (or use a commercial gauge) to hold against the slack side of the chain and a fixed reference point to check for minimum tension. (See the manufacturer’s chain-tension-measurement requirements based on chain size and length.)
• If possible, always replace sprockets when you replace the chain.
• Modify your chain guard with a bottom hinge so the transmission system can be accessed in less than 30 seconds.
• Precision-laser-align your chain sprockets.
• Beware of counterfeits. Stick with quality, name-brand chain and sprockets.

V-Belts and Pulleys

A V-belt is a simple device designed to wrap around a set of correspondingly shaped sheave pulleys. It connects a motor-powered drive pulley to one or more driven pulleys and transmits power at a defined number of revolutions per minute (rpm).

The belt is designed to “wedge” into the V-shaped sheave pulley and transmits load through its elastomer to the tension member, which transfers power to the driven sheaves.

During that power transfer, the belt is subjected to fatigue, which can eventually cause belt tension members to fail. The good news is that when correctly installed and tensioned, belts can transmit up to 98% driven power with a life expectancy of over 15,000 hours.

Premature failures, especially those that occur within the first 1,000 hours of operation, can sometimes be attributable to poor belt quality. For the most part, however, most premature failures are caused by heat.

They are overwhelmingly maintenance-related or maintenance-induced—the similarity among all these failures is that they are preventable.

V-belts perform best at operating temperatures between 90 and 120 F. Based on the Arrhenius rule, for every 18 F-deg. increase in a belt’s operating temperature, its expected life can be reduced by half.

Manufacturers point to elevated belt temperature as the number-one cause of failure in these components. The following points illustrate the key preventable contributors that cause belt-temperature elevation:

Belt Slippage

As a loaded belt unwraps from the driven pulley sheave, it tends to creep or slip as it releases while slowing the pulley. This is normal operation. A correctly tensioned belt is designed to slip between 1% and 3%. Less means the belt is too tight; more means it’s too loose.

Both conditions will cause belt temperature to rise. Slippage, or correct belt tension, is easily checked using a strobe rpm tool to check the speed rpm difference between driver and driven pulleys.

Newly installed belts should be tensioned at startup, again after running full load for 30 minutes, and 24 hours later, after the belt has seated into the pulley. With a 1:1 ratio driver-driven system at a measured 1800-rpm driver-pulley speed, the driven pulley should run between 1,782 rpm and 1,746 rpm (1% to 3% slip) under ideal tension.

A quick belt-tension check can also be performed using an infra-red (IR) temperature gun or camera to ensure the belt runs at a preferred operating temperature similar to that tested after proper tensioning.

Misalignment

Poor alignment causes the belt’s tension members to flex sideward and vibrate, creating additional stress. When a misaligned belt enters the sheave groove, it “rubs” the sheave wall, creating friction and wear of the sheave sidewall and belt.

Combined, all of these will raise a belt’s operating temperature. Sheaves can be offset and angularly misaligned if set up incorrectly. Always perform a precision alignment of driver/driven systems using laser or reverse-dial method to ensure minimal heat generation, wear, and energy loss.

High Operating Loads

When a driven system requiring multiple belts operates with loose, non-matched, or missing belts, belt loading will surpass the belt-design factor and create heat.

Always change multiple belts out as a matched set (from the same manufacturing batch or lot number), and check sheave pulleys for wear and change, as required.

Other basic-maintenance tips include:

• Protect belts from heat, dirt, water, and oil contamination.
• Always use a sheave-groove-profile gauge to check sheave wear. This $10 device is placed in the groove and a flashlight is used to detect light bypass. If more than .030″ light bleed is detected, immediately change the worn pulley. (FYI: Worn sheave pulleys make it challenging to tension belts correctly.)

Keep In Mind

“Creep to Failure” systems will eventually wear out. Simple setup and regular condition checks, though, can go a long way toward maximizing their life cycles, ensuring their reliability and availability, and minimizing their maintenance needs—and all for pennies a day.

Making sense of any production or maintenance workflow, process, or procedure requires a textual map in the form of a diagram, visual representation, or an ordered text list that shows or describes the relative position of the parts of something. Maintenance teams already use many different forms of maps in their day-to-day activities.

For example, machine drawings and schematics visually map out the relative connectedness of the machine’s components and depict how they work within a system, assembly, or sub-assembly.

Cartographic maps help maintainers find machinery in different locations within a plant, site, or city. The PM-work-order checklist maps out an ordered step-by-step work instruction required to perform a job task consistently.

As the American singer/songwriter Jimmy Buffett observed, “Without geography, you are nowhere!”

What Is Machine Mapping?

Machine Mapping (MM) is defined as the practice of:

• Identifying, classifying, and charting the physical location of all machine consumables and regular replacement items. These can include all filters, breathers, lubricants, transmission belts, pulleys, transmission chains, sprockets, fuses, etc.
• Identifying machine access points for calibrations, adjustments, consumable checks, and replacement work. For example, removable guarding, lubricant fill and drain ports, reservoir clean-out doors, and machine access doors. This will also include the identification of potential hazards, confined spaces, and if access requires the machine to be shut down and isolated.
• Identifying and charting out all predictive maintenance monitoring points. This can include all vibration point locations and all oil analysis sampling point locations.
• Identifying all lubrication system pumps, reservoirs, and delivery points found on each machine to facilitate an end-user lubrication regime.
• Identifying all data collection points that can include meters, gauges, “tell-tale” devices
• Identifying all lockout/tagout (LOTO) locations.

Machine mapping is a fundamental building block essential to any precision-maintenance or best-practice asset-management program. Although not common practice in modern-day plants, machine mapping was first used by the textile industry in the 19th century.

Benefits Of Lubrication Mapping

Where asset reliability is concerned, machine mapping is an important exercise involving the planner, maintainer, and operator working to review each machine individually.

This kaizen-styled activity not only serves to “map” a machine in its current state, locating all of its maintenance elements, but it is also an excellent opportunity for maintenance and production to work as a team for the benefit of the machine by tagging any possible problems and documenting potential improvement areas.

For example, Fig. 1 shows the underside of a rotary casting machine where a manual grease pump is located. This is a restricted area and indicates that operating the grease pump while the casting machine is running is too dangerous.

The situation required operations personnel to stop production before entering the area to pull the grease pump handle or fill the pump reservoir.

A machine-mapping exercise recommended that the pump immediately be moved outside the restricted area to eliminate maintenance-caused downtime and later be updated with an automated pump to lubricate the machine more consistently and efficiently.

Machine mapping is an inexpensive and highly cost-effective initiative that supports best-practice maintenance and delivers the following benefits:

• Provides an intimate, documented “as built” photo essay and location schematic(s) of each machine’s preventive and condition-based maintenance points that can be used to build relevant PM job tasks and work instructions.
• Builds relevant consumable-machine-parts lists that result in:
  • the correct parts choice that can be used to set up a vendor-managed inventory (VMI) approach
  • reduced inventory costs
  • reduced inventory real-estate requirements
  • reduced purchasing and handling costs
• Facilitates training and rapid assimilation of new hires to perform preventive maintenance in a consistent and correct manner
• Supports operator-based maintenance and training in Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) environments. Mapping diagrams can be posted by each machine on a mapping board or be made part of the relevant PM work order.
• Enables the development of efficient PM routing to increase “wrench-time” effectiveness.
• Give the planner an intimate understanding of the machine’s systems.
• Serves as an excellent framework from which to build relevant machine PM checklists.

Implementing A Machine Mapping Initiative

Implementing your machine-mapping initiative is a three-step process.

STEP 1

Build a list of machines to be mapped and obtain a geographical location map for each asset. From this, a workable mapping schedule/timetable can be devised.

Hint: if multiples of similar machines exist, start the mapping process with them. After the first machine is mapped, a replicable blueprint is in place that will allow the remainder of similar machines to be mapped very quickly.

STEP 2

Develop a data-gathering form and standardized process to document and collect the data for each machine. You will need a digital camera and a machine marker to complete the data collection.

Begin by gathering up as much information possible about a chosen machine’s maintenance systems and current maintenance requirements by collecting the following for each machine or machine type/group:

• Machine mechanical and electrical engineering drawings (engineering department)
• Lubrication schematics (engineering department, Operations & Maintenance manuals)
• Machine Bill of Material (BOM) lists (asset management work order system)
• Vibration-monitoring-route plans (maintenance planning department–these identify critical bearing point locations, engineering department)
• Oil-sampling route plan (maintenance planning department, engineering department)
• Machine-inventory list (asset management work order system)
• Lubricants (oil and grease) purchase list (stores or purchasing department)
• Consumables or regularly replaced items noted on PM work orders (stores or purchasing department and work-order system reports).

Note: If contractors previously completed PM work, they should be approached to assist in mapping. And they should be expected to provide this service at no charge.

STEP 3

Start the mapping process with your first machine.

The Return on Your Investment

Once machine mapping has been completed, the maintenance department has a unique and desirable library of maintenance documentation. It also has a strong understanding of each machine under its care. In turn, this invaluable information and knowledge can be referenced by the planner for all future work.

This article was originally published in The Ram Review.

The fundamental purpose of Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability (RAM) modeling is quantifying system performance, typically in a future interval of time. A system is a collection of items whose coordinated operation leads to the output, generally a production value.

The collection of items includes subsystems, components, software, human operations, etc. For example, an automobile can be considered a system with sub-components being the drivetrain, engine, gearbox, etc.

In RAM models, it is crucial to account for relationships between items to determine the final output of the system.

In various industries, RAM models have proven to be effective as cost avoidance or decision-making tools, as well as their ability to confirm or counter state assumptions by internal stakeholders.

This article highlights a non-exhaustive list of seven diverse solutions a RAM model can bring to the organization regarding decision-making advantages.

Contract Terms and Conditions

A contract between parties is often negotiated without evaluating the shared risks and potential liabilities if the contractual agreement is not fulfilled. In the case of an industrial operation, where output is precisely measured, the same output can be the basis of the contractual agreement, and therefore, a RAM model can be of great value.

It can assist both parties in understanding each other’s capabilities and projected performance and set the terms of the agreement on realistic performance rather than hypothetical ones.

An example of such agreements would apply between an oil producer (e.g., a bitumen upgrader) and a pipeline shipper when the producer commits to providing the pipeline with commodities to ship, and the pipeline operator commits to shipping all the products supplied.

Mix-Max Levels

Stocking and restocking spare parts for an industrial operation can be an expensive exercise. Stock too much, and money sits on the shelf and is lost when items go past their shelf life. Stock too little, and you are putting the plant at risk if there is a need for parts.

In this last case, one might have to accelerate (hotshot) a restock, which can be very expensive.

A RAM model can help establish the exact number of spares required on the store shelf and reorder amounts. This exercise can also evaluate the options to stock spares onsite or offsite, where the vendor carries the cost of insurance and other warehousing fees.

Maintenance Task Optimization

The “M” in RAM stands for Maintainability. It measures the impact of maintenance on the system’s performance. The RAM model allows the decision-maker to assess the cost or effectiveness of a maintenance task on an asset.

If a maintenance task, for example, is deemed too long, a new maintenance procedure can be developed and implemented. However, those changes in procedure come with a cost (e.g., if new diagnostic tools are required), and management needs to understand the benefits of the decision.

The RAM model can assist in evaluating the projected benefit and justify at least a trial run before the full implementation of the new procedure. Sometimes, the model can suggest the optimized or most economical frequency to perform the task.

Establishing a Criticality List

A criticality list establishes the hierarchy of assets and their ranked impact on the operation’s output. It helps the operator allocate resources to the equipment with the most impact on the revenue stream and, conversely, avoids wasting resources on other assets with lesser impact.

Because RAM models quantify the lost production contribution of each asset included in the model, they are useful processes to help build a criticality list.

However, the RAM model does not quantify other risk variables that comprise a criticality assessment, such as safety, environment, or reputation. Those have to be assessed using different processes.

Justification of Additional Equipment

Adding redundant or spare equipment (e.g., pumps in parallel and standby configurations) can be costly. Redundancy helps boost production and mitigate the impact of equipment failures. The need for redundancy can be estimated using RAM models both at the design stage and post-commissioning.

It might be much cheaper to evaluate the need for redundant equipment on the design blueprint of a greenfield project where, for example, geographical space is not a constraint, at least on paper.

However, adding redundant equipment once a plant is built and in operation can be extremely costly. Installation might need the plant to be shut down; there might be a need for rewiring or reprogramming of PLCs.

Space constraints could require reshuffling of equipment locations, let alone buying a piece of equipment by the unit rather than getting some bulk discount.

This is when the RAM model is crucial, as it looks at the entire and detailed installation cost versus the projected benefits. It can also help with the economic evaluation, such as IRR or other accounting metrics, which are crucial to making sound financial decisions.

Optimal Equipment Overhaul Timing

Equipment overhauls can be pretty expensive in terms of the work itself and the logistics involved. For example, cranes and transportation are required if a pump has to be overhauled at an offsite location and removed from a building.

Disconnection, reconnection, commissioning, and testing tasks are also significant expenses. Another common myth is that overhauls lead to “as good as new” equipment, which is not always true. Therefore, overhaul frequencies need to be carefully evaluated, and a RAM model is a perfect tool for this exercise.

If all the costs regarding the overhaul are known and entered, as well as the impact on the operation (e.g., risk of not having the pump), then the overhaul frequency can be calculated precisely. Alternatively, if an overhaul is not cost-effective, other options, such as replacement in kind or maintenance in situ, can be recommended.

Maintenance Workforce Management

Some companies have tight cash flows and want to budget future spends well in advance. When it comes to human resources, such as maintenance techs, a RAM model is a tool of choice to quantify the needs of maintenance resources in a future interval.

In the same way, the model can highlight the gaps in the workforce and warn management about the impact of such a shortfall. The model can also set up workforce pools that can be shared between different plant units to optimize the workforce output.

Managing people comes down to sound human resource management practices and processes, but the RAM model can still assist in the decision-making exercise.

RAM models offer a lot more than the above list. The author has provided some ideas on the diversity of benefits of a model. Once a model is built, it is a great go-to tool to check assumptions, evaluate ideas generated by the workforce, and subsequently make sound business decisions.

Many organizations struggle to manage maintenance stockrooms effectively, impacting the business’s bottom line.

In organizations with inefficient MRO processes, it’s common to find the site with high levels of reactive breakdowns, maintenance delays due to part shortages, high expediting costs, few if any bill of materials (BOMs), poor planning and scheduling practices, and much obsolete inventory on the shelves where the equipment no longer exists in the plant.

Studies show that over 32% of machine downtime is due to the storeroom not having the right parts and materials.

Isn’t it time to make changes if all of this sounds familiar? Here are some areas many sites could leverage to drive storeroom improvements.

As a longer-term strategy, ensure that a process exists to improve the bill of materials over time.

This effort assists the storeroom and helps technicians and planners as examples. It’s common to find planners spending five hours daily looking for the information to order parts for upcoming planned work.

If the asset hierarchy is developed correctly and work orders are written to the lowest child asset levels, ensure that parts are automatically attached to the child asset’s bill of materials when issued.

Also, ensure that management of change (MOC) processes exist to capture equipment changes and capital project additions from the engineering group.

When equipment is added or changed, it’s a perfect time to create or add to the bill of materials in the computerized maintenance management system’s (CMMS) inventory module.

Interestingly, about one-third of storerooms don’t do cycle counting. Couple that with unattended stockroom access that relies on the “honor system,” and you have a recipe for inaccurate storeroom inventories.

Unfortunately, the “honor system” has long been ineffective. No wonder when a technician needs a part, they order three; one for the machine, one in case that one doesn’t work, and one for what I call “squirrel stores,” aka their stash of parts in the toolbox or locker.

The requested extra parts are due to the lack of trust in the storeroom processes, although the undocumented removal of parts is due to the technicians themselves.

Perform cycle counting every week and chase down the variances. Do this by taking the number of inventory stock-keeping units (SKUs) and dividing them by 52 (weeks in the year).

For example, if you have 5200 SKUs, then count 100 per week.

For organizations that leverage ABC analysis (analysis by SKU value and cumulative issue rates), high-value “A” items can be counted four to six times per year, medium “B” items are counted twice per year, and low-value “C” items are counted once per year.

A suitable inventory management module in the CMMS package will handle the SKU selection for you.

Another simple fix is to ensure that a shelf-life program is in place. All too often, drive belts are hung on pegs on the wall and not rotated.

When the belt is pulled from the peg, UV light and the storage environment, coupled with time, have caused the belt to deteriorate to the point that it fails shortly after installation on the asset. There are a few components to address as part of this fix.

A first in, first out (FIFO) process leverages dates on barcode labels, showing when the part or material was received in inventory. If not using barcoding, then a simple ink stamp set to today’s date is used with another label to show the received date.

When the received parts are added to the storage location, the older parts are pulled to the front, and the new parts are placed in the rear of the storage location.

Continuing with shelf life, a v-belt has a shelf life of three years, depending on the storage conditions. Depending on the manufacturer’s recommendations, greases have a shelf life from six months to two years.

Even a ball bearing sealed in a package has a shelf life. When the lubricating film dries out, the bearing components can brinell due to the metal-to-metal contact, creating flat spots.

The storeroom should have a budget to remove parts that have exceeded their shelf life, but without the date labeling, that becomes indeterminable.

Also, belts are best stored flat on a shelf over being hung from a peg on the wall when possible.

Another mistake that undermines plant reliability is when the technician carries a used part into the storeroom to match up with the stocked item.

They leave the used part in the bin beside where they pulled the new part from. Later, the storeroom clerk sees the misplaced part and puts it into the correct location. Later, the part is removed to replace a broken one, only to find it failed.

With maintenance relegated to the role of part changers in many sites, the same thing happens when they pull multiple parts out of stock to troubleshoot the problem. When a part doesn’t fix the problem, it’s put back into stock.

Unknowingly, the part may have been damaged in the troubleshooting process. Like before, the item is pulled later to fix a failure and discovered to be failed. And if that part has a low min/ max point, another part may not be on the shelf.

While there are many more items to address, the last simple fix for this article is having a PM program for larger rotating spares.

For example, when motors sit for extended periods, the grease can slump in the bearings or dry out. Brinelling can occur, creating flat spots. The motor shaft can rust, or in more challenging environments, corrosion can occur.

An essential PM task for motors is to turn the shaft ten revolutions and stop it ninety degrees from the last position once per quarter. Some CMMS systems are programmed to show the keyway position on the PM work order each time it is generated.

At the same time, inspect the motor for corrosion or the shaft for rust. Use preventative measures to address these issues.

Effectively managing maintenance stockrooms is crucial for maintaining plant reliability and reducing costs. Organizations facing these challenges need to implement changes to improve their stockroom operations.

Education is a critical first step, followed by on-site coaching and storeroom certification. If you need help figuring out where to start, contact me at JShiver@PeopleandProcesses.com.

Many years ago, I wrote a book entitled The Death of Reliability, Is it too late to resurrect the one true competitive advantage? I wrote the book because of my growing concern that we are losing the experience and skills necessary to deliver reliability.

It is not just my opinion. There is a public outcry about the loss of skilled trades in the United States and the impact this is having on the industry. Famously, Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs had testified before Congress about this topic. He points to the onslaught of naysayers across many lines that are contributing factors.

He highlights the “no child left behind” initiative that greatly emphasized college education over skilled trades. It was a mantra First Lady Laura Bush started and echoed by parents, teachers, and media.

It is so prevalent in education, not because it is correct, but because it drives revenue to these institutions. The loss of education of our children to indoctrination is a foundational aspect of this erosion.

President Donald Trump also identified the crisis facing the skilled trades industry when he directed the Secretary of Labor to impanel a group to address this. The panel focused on apprenticeship training in the industry as an answer, but the Secretary failed to select the right resources to address the issue.

He impaneled a bunch of CEOs from companies who did not have apprenticeship programs and failed to recognize the vital need. Many of the other members of this panel were from academia, and their interests were not to assist in apprenticeships but to maintain the status quo of their revenue stream.

Finally, the unions were asked to participate and were part of the problem. The union’s inept management of their groups and watering down these programs have led to the crisis.

So, without actual skilled trades journeymen, organizations are turning towards consultants. This has accelerated the death of reliability because 96% of these “experts” are frauds.

The duty of journeyman skills tradespeople is the education of the next generation. To this end, it is my duty to alert consumers about another alarming trend in reliability. I have repeatedly stated that 96% of all reliability consultants are not qualified.

This is not my assumption; it is the findings of a century of research into top management and its composition. The results of these studies show that less than 4% of leaders have any qualifications in reliability. Despite this, many unqualified leaders decide to open consulting firms or join others and mislead clients about their capabilities.

The Private Equity Takeover and its Consequences

Now there is another issue. The few qualified firms are selling out to more prominent venture capitalists or private equity-backed groups masquerading as smaller organizations. Even firms with some of the pioneers in reliability are now nothing more than mascots.

The modern private equity industry has its roots tracing back to 1946, and since then, it has traversed four significant eras, each punctuated by three cycles of prosperity and decline.

The nascent stages of private equity, spanning 1946 to 1981, were defined by minimal investment volumes, primitive firm structures, and a lack of widespread understanding or knowledge of the industry. This resulted in minor disruptions to the US industrial fabric.

The initial wave of prosperity and subsequent downturn, which stretched from 1982 to 1993, witnessed a sudden escalation in leveraged buyout operations funded by high-yield bonds, and this period peaked with the sizable acquisition of some landmark companies, followed by a near implosion of the leveraged buyout sector in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

This event marked the beginning of a downturn in the US industry, shifting from value and quality towards a scenario where bankers drove companies towards ruin.

The subsequent cycle of boom and bust, lasting from 1992 to 2002, rose from the ruins of the savings and loan crisis, insider trading controversies, the collapse of the real estate market, and the recession that marked the early 1990s.

This era was marked by the rise of more institutionalized private equity firms, culminating in the immense dot-com bubble of 1999 and 2000. This further resulted in industry collapse and forced a move towards technology. The loss of experience and skills led to digital and virtual nonvalue offerings.

The infiltration of technology into leadership has done some of the most significant damage.

It replaced leadership and ownership with management and emails. This is seen when you see the leaders sitting behind their desks typing on a computer and no longer out on the plant floor leading.

During this period, we saw the most significant accelerated decline in industry. The third boom and bust cycle (from 2003 through 2007) came after the dot-com bubble’s collapse—leveraged buyouts reached an unparalleled size, and the institutionalization of private equity firms is exemplified by the Blackstone Group’s 2007 initial public offering.

Since 2007 we have seen an accelerated decline in value and quality across the US industry in favor of quick short-term profits. Along with this migration, we have seen companies once run by qualified people who earned their position by working their way up the chain of command to lawyers and bankers looking to hop from company to company and leaving the latter in ruins.

The key here is that private equity is described as periods of boom and bust cycles because the bankers see the boom side of making money off of you, and you get to feel the bust side of losing money because of them.

In its early years to roughly 2000, the private equity and venture capital asset classes were primarily active in the United States. With the second private equity boom in the mid-1990s and the liberalization of regulation for institutional investors in Europe, a mature European private equity market emerged.

You will be surprised by what you find if you do the due diligence. Most organizations are little more than non-value-added fronts for venture capitalists. If you need help identifying these, please give me a call. I have a list of organizations that will surprise you.

The more significant issue is that clients are not doing their due diligence to identify these posers. They fall victim to the marketing hype of these venture capitalists and end up no better off and, in most cases, worse off than they were.

This gives them a bad taste for the 4% of firms led by truly qualified reliability professionals working to help organizations who lack the leaders with the experience and skills but know they need to improve their reliability.

Finding Qualified Reliability Professionals

When a client asks me how they verify they have found someone in the 4%, I tell them to investigate the consultant. First, what is their background? Are the senior leaders of the organization skilled tradespersons? The venture capitalists are bankers, marketing, businesspeople, etc. This will eliminate the most significant percentage of consultants.

Look to see who owns the firm. Don’t just select a familiar name or one that may have been used previously. Most of the firms with longevity founded by icons are no longer owned by the founders. While the founder may be involved in name, it is a contractual agreement with the bankers to mislead the client base.

Most contracts include a 1-3 year agreement to masquerade as the older company to ensure the bankers get their investment back. Nothing in these agreements has anything to do with value or providing clients with reliability. It is about bankers making money.

Another red flag is that if you believe you are getting the principal when you contract with these shell groups, the person who shows up is not them. You may get the icon during the sale presentation, but you never get them when the work starts.

Research the person doing the work on your site. Verify their stated advanced education. A simple Google search will show you many of the advanced credentials advertised by leading consultant groups/companies, are paper mills. Look into the accreditation of the schools if the education or title is important. You will be surprised.

Another easy verification is work experience. If the consultant has only worked as a consultant for a decade, there is no experience or trade skill.

Have they done the work that they profess to be an expert at? Have they turned a wrench, troubleshot equipment, planned, scheduled, worked as a reliability engineer, supervised, or led a department, team, or program, or are they someone who was given a title or has a college degree that means little to reliability qualifications? Many makeup titles like reliability or lubrication engineer; however, neither degree exists.

They are sales ploys to mislead you as to their nonexistent qualifications.

The smoke and mirrors that most consulting firms hide behind is an overpromised and under-delivered result.

They are masters at convincing their clients they achieved the desired result. In reality, they manage your expectation to the watered-down version of their playbook.

They attempt to force your (round) organization into their (square) hole. They force you into a nonvalue-added result and use smoke to give the illusion of success. Bottom-line is despite all the pomp and circumstance, your organization sees no real change in reliability.

They water down the goals and objectives, and because clients are reluctant to admit they were taken, the repeated failures of prominent venture capitalists and private equity-backed firms are hiding in plain sight.

Why does this matter? More than 50% of a company’s expense is maintenance and reliability. At the same time, only 4% of organizations have a leader qualified by experience and skills to lead reliability. So, the other 96% of organizations must do the hard work to identify the 4% of consultants with the expertise and skills to deliver.

In reference to my book, written years ago, I am afraid to admit that we are witnessing the death of reliability. It is happening for all the reasons listed above, and I wonder if the 4% has the time left to turn this around.

I know this article will be met with a lot of resistance. I would guess that 96% of the folks that take issue with my comments and facts do so because it hit close to home.

This article chronicles a reliability journey at a chemical manufacturer in the Southeastern United States.

Implementing a reliability-based maintenance program has tremendous business benefits – the kind of impact that executives get excited about. Before our plant started down the reliability path, we spent $39.1 million in maintenance. We had 200 maintenance craftspeople and, on average, 250 contractors on site.

Seven years later, we spent $17 million and had 173 maintenance craft people and six contractors. We achieved these outcomes just by making work go away. This was not just a single-plant implementation. We worked across four sites, and they all got to about the same place.

Each site was expected to develop its own business case for the reliability project. I had that responsibility for our site. Developing and presenting it taught me a valuable lesson. When you create a business case that exposes a huge opportunity for a positive impact, that message will only sometimes be received well.

I compared our spending as a percentage of replacement value versus best in class to define our maintenance cost reduction opportunity. I also did some extensive OEE calculations by looking at our best month of production in each one of the operating areas. My reasoning was that if you could do it for a month, you ought to be able to do it for a year.

I used that approach to define the business opportunity from increased production. The result was so significant that I decided to be more conservative and cut them in half. It still felt too optimistic, so I cut them in half again.

When I presented the result to the leadership team, they laughed me out of the room. They could not believe that they were mismanaging the resources of that site so badly. Just expect skeptics!

The site where I got laughed out achieved results that doubled the initial business case. We were tracking the cost of reliability events, those major reliability events that cost you a lot of production, and they were steadily declining over time.

We received significant benefits in the procurement process by reducing costs and improved service levels. Below is a chart of the four sites that tracked maintenance spending as a percentage of replacement asset value. The benchmark value for this industry is somewhere around 2%. I was at the dark blue plant.

Because the sites were somewhat different in the products produced, we did not have a universal way to measure OEE. Still, each site had some improvements, and they were significant. I recall being at one of the sites when the plant manager put up a slide that showed the break-even volume over time – the volume needed to break even versus the actual production volume.

Break-even volume was going down because costs were being reduced, and production volumes were going up because they were improving capacity through reliability improvements. The spread between the two was increasing profitability. That resonated with me.

A reliability transformation delivers steady, continuous returns.

Active leadership support must be in place to drive culture change. One of the plants had active resistance from the plant manager, and he was replaced. Corporate leadership had the courage to take the hard road when necessary.

Change management is at least as important as the technical solution. It is a challenge within one site but a much more significant challenge across a group of sites. We had an executive sponsor that walked around with his finger in the air: one solution for all sites.

It was crucial as he was a big driver of that. I will never forget when executive sponsor came to the site I was at, he said, “I have implemented four maintenance systems in my career; this is going to be the last one. We are going to dismantle the past and hardwire the future.”

Having a high level of executive sponsorship is also critical for change management.

Read the rest of this series on the PCA Consulting website.

My focus is on what and how companies invest in their equipment to drive results. As someone who has worked in maintenance and reliability for more than 40 years, I enjoy learning about what is new. However, the reoccurring mistake in all equipment purchases is the lack of knowledge of how to achieve and sustain the performance of the latest equipment.

The truth is that most companies don’t develop reliability programs with proactive approaches because they believe that new equipment does not need these efforts. This is where they start accruing maintenance debt.

Maintenance Debt

Maintenance debt is like all other types of debt. When you run (spend) the equipment outside the design standards or forego maintenance, it creates accelerated deterioration (debt). You build so much debt that the equipment fails when you do this enough.

If you continue to run the equipment in this manner, you lose the design life you sold to the decision-makers to purchase the equipment. Foregoing maintenance never pays off. The damage caused by this poor business decision will never be repaid and will result in failure and accelerated need to replace the equipment.

By not developing proactive approaches to keep their shiny new toys in reliable condition, they operate the new equipment without regard to its long-term success to make a quick buck.

This makes them look like geniuses and gets them their next job with the next company, but it leaves the company that made this investment with all its promises and a maintenance debt they will never overcome.

Having said this, I have also been a part of the decision-making process of many companies to procure the equipment. The capital processes are extensive and require a significant investment in time and effort. These decisions rely heavily on promises from the original equipment manufacturers (OEM) and misleading information regarding their equipment capabilities.

I have also worked for major equipment manufacturers and know the strategy they used to mislead and misrepresent their products to make the purchase by the company appealing. These promises are on unrealistic throughput/production and reliability. Neither of these is ever realized by the company, and the sad part is the company does not hold its team or the equipment manufacturers accountable.

What’s the Real Problem in Reliability?

The foundational issue that drives this failure today in all industries is the loss of genuinely qualified reliability professionals as part of the senior leadership team. Less than 4% of these leaders have any real-world experience in reliability. This limited experience gives them little knowledge base to achieve the desired results.

There has been a shift from developing senior leaders from within to employing job hoppers.

Job hoppers are short-term employees focusing on making themselves look good rather than on the long-term sustainable success of the organization. This drives reliance on OEM lies and leaves the inexperienced decision maker to make a wrong decision.

Forty years ago, the story was significantly different. The successful companies developed their leadership from within and invested in actual capital expenditures and operations. Qualified professionals led these companies, not venture capital groups, accountants, or lawyers. They did not rely on OEM lies because they possessed the experience to make the right decision. Now Boards of Directors want short-term ideas rather than long-term results and make terrible decisions daily.

They confuse throughput with success and have lost the ability to see what their operations are truly capable of. I cannot tell you how many senior leaders have told me that throughput covers many mistakes. This is true if those leading the company are not knowledgeable and lack the skills of a true leader. This is the predominant leadership style used today and the root cause of underperforming capital projects.

Let us look at what I mean by my statements above. The capital justification process is usually laborious and all about leadership knowledge and experience. The first question should be, what are we trying to achieve? Without question, the answer will be more throughput. That is a convenient answer.

Why Experience Matters in Overcoming OEM Misinformation

The next step is where we start to fail. We specify the necessary equipment based on our needs and the manufacturer’s misleading information. We need the equipment to produce specific tons/hour. The OEM promises their equipment will deliver it. Forty years ago, we knew through experience that the OEM was lying about the equipment’s capabilities.

Any OEM promised production should be discounted by 20%. If you want to achieve the throughput desired, you need to find equipment that the OEM says will deliver 20% more tons/hour. Here is your first opportunity to get it right. We fail to make the right decision because of our lack of experience with the decision-makers and the misleading promises of the OEM.

Another aspect of equipment selection is how well it is designed for reliability and maintainability. The more reliability and maintainability built into the equipment, the less scheduled downtime you need to do these functions.

When I say reliability and maintainability built in, I do not mean the OEM version. The design for reliability and maintainability needs to be done by qualified maintenance and reliability professionals.

OEMs do not possess the qualified personnel or the interest in increasing the reliability of their equipment. OEMs make the bulk of their profits on parts and service sales. Unqualified leaders allow the OEM or inexperienced staff to sell them on unrealistic capabilities.

To prove this, you must look at the OEM manual and its recommended maintenance. They recommend fixed time/usage-based maintenance, which offers no proactive efforts. They recommend gas company lubricants, which could be the least effective and the most important aspect of proactive maintenance.

This is factual evidence that they have no interest in reliability or providing value. I have worked for a few major OEMs. When I suggested providing premium lubricants or any other real reliability or maintainability improvement, I was told that we are in the business of selling parts, services, and new equipment. Reliability hurts our bottom line. Qualified leaders can see through this and possess the experience to see through the lies.

The Dangers of Short-Term Decision Making

Now, look at their recommended spare parts list. It is one or more of everything—proof positive where their allegiance lies. The highest cost to any organization is the loss of opportunity because of equipment downtime.

The short-term “cost to buy” decision to remove the reliability and maintainability capabilities will always cost the organization more than the costs to include it from the beginning.

Additionally, keeping these capabilities will go a long way to limiting the maintenance debt that most organizations begin to incur the day the equipment goes into production. I have watched many companies remove this functionality to reduce the cost of buying.

Senior leaders lacking qualifications fall for this short-term approach emphasizing that leaders without experience and capabilities are at the root of this entire issue. What they need to focus on are costs to use. The reason for this wrong business decision is that we have lost the experience and skills necessary to make these decisions.

In our haste to promote job hoppers and shortcut what leaders are, we employ people that are the perfect example of the “peter principle.” The “peter principle” states that we have promoted the person to their highest level of incompetence.

Again, I cannot tell you how often I hear those terrible business decisions made because of the short-sighted “cost to buy” approach. The reason the value focus on “cost to use” has fallen by the wayside is that companies are lazy and do not want to do the work necessary to make the right decision; the senior leaders making these decisions are not interested in the long-term success of the business. We have lost the senior leaders with the experience to lead and make these decisions. It has given way to job hoppers, not internal development.

Capital Purchases

Now let us continue with the discussion of capital purchases. The decision to produce the required tons/hour needs to be vetted. We must add in any time we need to make the equipment deliver reliable results. We must understand how many hours a year we need to schedule the equipment down to avoid unscheduled downtime.

Again, building in reliability and maintainability reduces the need for additional throughput capabilities. We need to buy equipment that produces at a higher rate to allow for reliability efforts. If, after designing in reliability and maintainability, we see that we need the equalizing time, this will push the production per hour to higher tons/hour.

We know that its maximum throughput is 80% of the OEM promise, so we need to procure equipment with a production rate of more than the required ton/hour. The experience and understanding of equipment are something other than what you get taught in college or a seminar or sitting behind a desk with a title.

There is no quick fix or shortcut to this knowledge. Never trust the OEM to represent their product honestly. I can tell you that forty years ago, senior leaders who were developed within the company and qualified to do their jobs delivered what they said. They did not have to hide behind throughput or smoke and mirrors.

Let us take a moment to reflect on your day-to-day life. If your organization did make the necessary adjustment to throughput, instead of allowing this adjustment to be used for reliability and the organization’s long-term success, it would just use the additional capability to cover operational/leadership mistakes.

They will push the equipment to its limits and justify it because production is king. This approach is the death of our industrial might. It is the rallying cry of the unqualified leader and at the root of the end of our competitive advantage.

Since capital is the start of the competitive advantage available to us if realized, how we operate our equipment is the sustainable part of the equation.

In industry, the price point of the commodity sold is fixed for companies. The only competitive advantage available to these companies is the cost reduction to allow for the most significant profit margins. How do we reduce costs effectively and in a sustainable manner? Many organizations look for quick reductions that result in long-term damage.

The biggest mistake that comes to mind is the reduction in the workforce. While reducing the workforce is a quick and easy solution, it is always a long-term disaster. This poor solution results from senior leadership teams needing more leadership skills and experience to lead an organization into the next century.

Let us look at a sustainable approach to reducing our costs and thus leveraging the most significant competitive advantage available to all organizations. Qualified senior leaders know that a 10% reduction in maintenance costs is the bottom-line equivalent to a 40% increase in throughput.

We know that achieving a 40% increase in throughput would require significant investment, including building new facilities and staffing this facility. This is usually cost-prohibitive for most organizations.

Often unqualified senior leaders focus on the 10% reduction in maintenance costs. However, they do this arbitrarily and without experience and knowledge of what this type of reduction means—cutting the annual spend by 10% with no thought other than the cuts will always result in higher costs to the organization in downtime and subsequent repairs.

It costs 90% less to proactively stop the failure than it does to repair.

Because of the loss of qualified maintenance and reliability leaders, senior leadership is caught off guard by these increased costs. Many organizations hide these costs in other areas to prevent the board from realizing that their poor leadership has damaged the organization.

How do we reduce the maintenance costs by 10% with actions designed to sustain the reduction and profit of the organization? The answer is with truly qualified maintenance and reliability leaders. These leaders are almost extinct.

They are being replaced with college degrees or unqualified job hoppers who may have held a title but possess no fundamental skills or experience or “jacks of all trades” (and masters in none) over the past 30 years.

The trend today among unqualified maintenance and reliability managers is to implement a wide array of technology to distract from their lack of leadership skills and experience. These shiny toys and fancy tech mislead the organization into thinking they are being proactive.

The fact is that no technology will make you more reliable. Technology cannot and will not make your organization more reliable. If you have a reliability and maintenance leader recommending tech as an answer, you now know they are not true leaders in reliability but the reason your company is failing.

What is Reliability to Your Organization?

The definition of reliability is the quality or state of being reliable. It is the extent to which an experiment, test, or measuring procedure yields the same results on repeated trials. Reliability is achieving the equipment’s optimum reference state. In short, the optimum reference state is the prescribed state of machine configuration, operating conditions, and maintenance activities required to achieve and sustain specific reliability operations.

To qualified maintenance and reliability professionals and leaders, this means taking the actions necessary to achieve equipment design life. Anything less than that is a failure. Maintenance and reliability leaders/professionals know their job is to achieve equipment design life, not employ technology to monitor its death.

Scheduling Downtime to Avoid Unscheduled Downtime

If your company believes scheduling downtime is reliable, you are not qualified. Scheduling downtime based on vibration, thermography, or other tech is a failure and the approach of an unqualified leader or consultant.

These unqualified pretenders boast that they can monitor equipment using vibration, thermography, ultrasonics, etc., and schedule the replacement before failure. They call this proactive maintenance because they avoid unscheduled downtime.

This approach costs the organization 90% more than stopping the failures. No maintenance and reliability experience or skill is required to monitor your equipment’s death. Often the operation suffers unscheduled downtime because of the 75% – 89% variable.

Why is the breakdown 75% – 89% variable? It is because the technology cannot know how well the component it is monitoring has been cared for. It needs to be cared for properly, or it will not fail.

Technology does not know if the component was professionally installed, kept contamination free, and properly lubricated. These are the top three reasons components fail.

Reliability can only be accomplished by stopping failures. This is where a qualified senior leader makes a difference, especially an experienced maintenance and reliability leader. These leaders know this and how to accomplish it.

Qualified senior leaders know what true proactive maintenance is. Proactive maintenance is creating or controlling a situation by causing something to happen rather than responding to it after it has happened.

The fact is that technology requires a failure, and all you are doing is responding, so by definition, condition monitoring/predictive maintenance and preventive/fixed time maintenance are reactive and respond to failure after it has happened.

Proactive maintenance includes proper lubrication, contamination control, and proper installation. These are the proactive maintenance activities. It is simple but requires an expert in maintenance and reliability to lead these efforts.

Only through years of skilled trade experience and education can someone achieve this level of expertise. No shortcut, college degree, seminar, abbreviated academic program, etc., can equal the time and effort required to lead maintenance and reliability.

The industry is in the crisis we are in now because unqualified senior leaders attempt to shortcut these requirements and then falsely promote success.

I challenge any organization that feels it has a proactive reliability approach to answer a few quick questions:

1. How long do most of your bearings last?
2. How often do most of your motors last?
3. How long do most of your gearboxes last?

If the truthful answer to all three of the above questions is not 25 years, then you need a proactive reliability approach. Does your lubricant come from a gas company? If it does, you need a reliability approach.

Remember, the job of a qualified maintenance and reliability leader is to stop failures. It is to achieve equipment design life, not monitor its death using one of the fancy technologies today. The only way to accomplish this is through proper lubrication, contamination control, and installation. 98.8% of all failures fall into these areas.

No technology or computer program will ever make a difference in these areas. Only qualified maintenance and reliability professionals with knowledge and experience in these areas will stop the failures.

The development of qualified reliability and maintenance professionals stopped in the 1980s. It was replaced with a multi-craft handyman or worse. If your company does not have an apprenticeship program led by real journeyman tradespeople, you cannot and will not have reliability. If you shortcut this program with titles or community college crap, you cannot have reliability.

While there is a lot of excitement in purchasing new equipment and using fancy technology to monitor it, as senior leaders, we are not doing our job if this is our approach.

Buying new equipment without understanding its functionality and reliability is irresponsible. Using technology and touting it as reliability is irresponsible. Hiding mistakes by short-term throughput is reckless.

Senior Leadership Responsibilities

Senior leaders need to do challenging work to achieve sustainable, reliable operations. If you need to know what that work is, find someone to help you figure it out. I will tell you to beware of consultants. Ninety-eight percent of consultants today are part of the problem rather than the solution. They are desktop engineers without qualifications or any real-world experience.

Do not accept inferior qualifications from hacks, wannabes, or those that think they hit a triple because they were born on third base. You will be replacing unqualified senior leaders with an unqualified external resource. Stop hiring them based on their hype and interview them as if they were new hires.

As a senior leader, it is your job to hear what they are saying as they manipulate you to what they offer, not what you need. Remember, no two operations are alike. Supposed success at other locations does not equate to your site or success. Most of these success stories are just that, stories. If it sounds too good, it is.

Senior leaders must challenge these fake professionals to prove their claims. Consultants cover up their failures with broad motherly statements that do not answer your questions. False reliability claims are perfect examples of the opinion that figures never lie, but liars can figure.

Please do not fall prey to them and work to identify qualified, skilled trade reliability professionals. As a senior leader in your organization, you must look for someone who has run a plant, has a skilled trades background, and has been on-site at 3 AM turning wrenches to get the plant back up. This is where you will find your bang for your buck.

Buying new equipment is not the savior of your organization. Buying the right equipment and maintaining it in its optimum reference state is. Senior leaders must invest in a resource with the knowledge, trade skills, and experience to achieve this.

Any organization can buy equipment and trust the OEM to represent their product correctly. If long-term success is the organization’s goal, there must be much more work. Never trust the OEM, and never make new equipment decisions on buying costs. As a senior leader, it is always your job to keep your eye on the long-term success of your organization. It is never about you; it is about the facility.

Stop making bad decisions because you are afraid to admit you do not have the knowledge or experience necessary in this area. Find a qualified maintenance and reliability professional with hands-on experience. I will leave you with this quote from my father, “You do not have to be the smartest person in the room, but make sure to surround yourself with them.”

The Precision Lubrication team recently spoke with Ian McKinnon about precise alignment. Ian is a pioneer in the maintenance field, a passionate instructor, and a founding principal of Reliability Solutions, LP.

Why don’t you use lasers to demonstrate alignments in your training courses?

We are trying to show the importance of reinforcing the connectivity between reverse technologies and current laser systems. The device being used doesn’t matter. It would be best if you had a greater understanding of the equipment being utilized. This is the best connectivity to reverse methodologies.

It is not about the device a technician uses in the field. It is about precision. There has always been this idea that you need a particular device to create that precision alignment. The device doesn’t make the equipment alignment precise, so who cares what you use? You need to know precision and the tolerances provided today as that starting point. Understanding angular and offset alignment is critical for the technician to determine how close you need to be based on actual variables.

What do you focus on when training on precise alignment?

We discuss many types of alignment methods along with the history behind each technique. These methods include the “calibrated” eyeball, Rim and Face, Cross Dial, Reverse Dial, and laser systems. We do talking points on each way you can do an alignment, and we talk about the potential errors of each method. We also address dimensional accuracy, repeatability, and the need to understand where the technician is in the alignment process. When it comes to lasers, our instructors discuss how each system, regardless of the manufacturer (laser), is built on the principles and fundamentals of a reverse methodology system. We focus on what is happening inside that laser to understand the precise alignment process better.

Does learning a reverse methodology system hinder technicians in the field that use lasers?

There are many opportunities to put a technician in a frame of mind that they need to be more comfortable using a laser. The laser could provide information that, as a technician, they may need help understanding. A technician could become confused with the readings provided or, in the worst-case scenario, lose trust in the equipment and find other alternatives.

A technician needs to understand how that laser works to keep this from happening.

They need to be familiar with and understand what reverse methodology of alignment really and truly is. The more familiar a technician is with reverse methodology, the more they understand the laser readings.

Could you explain why you use Reverse Dial Indicators in your training?

We use Reverse Dial Indicators in our courses to promote connectivity from the technician’s eyeball (seeing a gauge) to their brain (cerebral connection) to develop that rooted understanding of precise alignment. That is the best connectivity we have today, bar none!  Our students in the classroom understand what alignment is and the best way to achieve that alignment when they enter their facilities. Our teaching method in the classroom brings that connectivity to errors, identifying these errors and achieving excellence in the field.

Do you use Reverse Dial Indicators to show you don’t need a laser in the field?

Not at all! In our training, we promote laser usage. We want people to use lasers. You need the speed and the accuracy, and you need that instantaneous readout from that laser. We could use lasers in our training, but we do not. Using Reverse Dial Indicators shows the accuracy, respectability, correction of fixture twist, and proper removal of pre-alignment errors, the same as with a laser. But here is the kicker, using our methodology, the student gets to see with their eyes and hands how fast it can change just by watching the face of the dial as they rotate the shaft. That technician will see and ultimately sense the importance of being extremely cautious with a digital instrument where no visual recognition is available to them.

What’s the importance of plotting using a sheet of graph paper?

Why plot?  Excellent question!  The direct reason we conduct plotting in our training is to provide that visual stimulus to the brain where the “shaft-to-shaft” positions are so that a greater degree of accuracy and the decision of the next step can be achieved.

The importance of plotting is simple. The accuracy of any alignment is about ensuring that we maintain, in a dynamic operation, the most minor radial internal clearance of any part of the machine assembly.  Thus, reducing the mechanical and parasitic frictional load.

The laser manufacturers fully understand the need for these plots and provide them as an option in their different laser models. These models are expensive, so most companies don’t get them. If plotting is not part of the laser option, you can grab that three-cent piece of graph paper and plot your positions.

Misalignment only happens four ways, and all four can be plotted. It is either misaligned where the feet must go up, down, left, or right to correct the misalignment, and it can be seen visually on that inexpensive piece of graph paper.

With a laser setup, the move/mode function provides the required movement at the inboard or outboard feet of the “sight” or “movable” machine.  We teach our students to plot this, hence, if the front positions are known, a single misalignment line can be drawn, and the relative positions from shaft to shaft can be visually seen.

Why would we want to graph every misalignment? Is there a time or monetary constraint?

I will answer both of these questions together. Plotting is inexpensive and does take a few minutes out of the alignment process. But it truly depends on what the company is willing to do for the technician and how comfortable the technician is with plotting.

The key to graphing each misalignment allows for the technician to:

• Know where they started originally
• Know where they are after every move
• Know the determination of a final and precise position

By graphing, this option can cause a purchase change of many thousands of dollars; for some companies, it may not be available for the technician. In other words, a financial alternative.  Therefore, understanding how the reverse system works and knowing how to plot your laser or a dial indicator is paramount to improving reliability.

Why don’t you use lasers when training on precise alignment?

We do not use lasers during training for a few reasons. One reason is we are simply trying to create a connection with the student’s cerebral stimulus. You know, that “Ah-ha” moment when they arrive at the excitement of discovery with their own thoughts. You cannot do that with a laser.

We also want to ensure that the student sees “that’s how it works” and starts building that mental picture so that when they return to their facility and grab the laser to do an alignment, they understand what is happening during the process.

It is all about the technician’s comfort zone. We want them to use lasers; we need them to use lasers.  But that technician better have the knowledge and the know-how to use that laser. It is not about pushing the button. It is about understanding what alignment is.

Are there any drawbacks to using a laser in the field?

There are drawbacks to using any alignment tool in the field, but lasers have some flaws.  There are lasers out there that are affected by the environment the technician is in. One example is lasers that don’t work well in bright sunlight, dusty areas, or won’t work at all in areas of the technician’s facility with a lot of moisture, condensation, or steam in the air.

If there is a lot of vibration from other machines in the area, a technician is aligning; this is a significant issue. The Laser measures in microns, and vibrations from other machines will cause that laser to move ever so slightly, but many times a second. In this case, the laser becomes overloaded with averages, giving false alignment readings. But you should know the limitations of the equipment. This allows the technician to conduct a precise alignment with the right tool – laser or a dial indicator.

Precise alignment principles are taught in the Reliability Solutions course: Essential Craft Skills (ECS) 1: Assembly and Installation.