Does your business unwittingly encourage poor reliability?

By Martin Williamson

That might sound like a daft question but think about it.

During a training class this week, an attendee told me that their compressor fails regularly because the purchasing team insist on buying cheaper mineral oil despite the OEM requirement for a synthetic oil. This is a typical story I hear frequently.

There is often a conflict of interest between the reliability targets of the maintenance group, and the cost reduction targets imposed on the purchasing group. In fact, some purchasing outsource companies are paid on their "savings" performance and their role as a contractor often distances them from the involvement that maintenance and engineering should have in the procurement process.

And it is not just in the procurement of lubricants and filters, often the problem is built in at the purchase stage of the equipment when basic essentials for efficient lubrication activity are deselected from the machine for minor cost savings. These minor savings will result in long term costs.

As engineers, we have to be savvy about costs, and that means putting a strong financial case to the purchasing department to assist them with the life cycle costing in order to really achieve those savings and improve profitability that management so desire.

Sad but true:

During the course of my training classes I hear some interesting stories. I can't vouch for the accuracy, but I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised!

Here are some of the classics:

• The fitter used his safety shoe to dispense oil into the pump.
• The fitter patted the coal dust around the filler to form a funnel into which he could pour the oil.
• We cut the spout off the new OilSafe containers because the oil was flowing too slowly.
• We use galvanised watering cans because the rose stops dirt in the oil going into the machine.
• We leave the tanks open so the operators can check the oil level more easily.
• We were told to stop using the filter carts because they were destroying the value of the oil analysis programme.

If you have any stories to share, please send them in.

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