Page 366 - Intro Predictive Maintenance

A Total-Plant Predictive Maintenance Program 357

figures repeatedly show, the days have passed when top management could regard
maintenance as merely a bothersome expense to keep as low as possible. Not only is
low-cost maintenance impossible, it may be undesirable.

What factors are causing this continuous increase in maintenance costs? It certainly
isn’t inflation because maintenance costs are related to the fixed percentage of fixed
assets. Increased mechanization is one factor, although it increases the significance of
equipment maintenance. This means that if you mechanize a facility (i.e., install better,
faster, more complicated equipment to take care of production needs), then the main-
tenance staff must be increased proportionately with better-qualified, higher-salaried
people. As mechanization continues, the equipment becomes more complex, necessi-
tating highly skilled personnel, therefore creating the need for training of both oper-
ations and maintenance. This domino effect means increased maintenance parts and
supplies, which again means sky-rocketing maintenance costs.

Another factor is that larger, more complex, single-line processes have increased
the impact of any interruption in a single operation on the overall production scheme.
This means maximized round-the-clock maintenance when a unit is down. These
large single-line units again mean tighter delivery schedules that increase the effect
of interruptions to operating equipment and demand more and better maintenance.

A third factor is competition and market saturation, which means increased quality
requirements and calls for immediate correction of defective conditions. All of
these factors—coupled with the continually rising costs of labor, supplies, and
materials—have caused top management to focus more attention on the maintenance
function.

16.2.2 Preventive Maintenance Tasks
Fundamental preventive maintenance tasks, such as lubrication, must be universally
implemented before a predictive maintenance program can provide optimum results.
If these fundamental tasks are not performed, the predictive maintenance program will
be overwhelmed with chronic lubrication, calibration, alignment, balancing, and other
problems that would be eliminated by basic preventive maintenance tasks.

Lubrication
Friction of two materials moving relative to each other causes heat and wear. Great
Britain has calculated that friction-related problems cost their industries more than 1
billion dollars per year. They coined a new term, tribology—derived from the Greek
work, “tribos,” which means “rubbing”—to refer to new approaches to the old
dilemma of friction, wear, and the need for lubrication. Technology intended to
improve the wear resistance of metal, plastics, and other surfaces in motion has greatly
improved over recent years, but planning, scheduling, and control of the lubricating
program is often reminiscent of a plant handyman wandering around with his long-
spouted oil can looking for trouble spots.