We Offer the Perfect Proactive Maintenance Solution.
What is Crisis Work?
Plainly stated, the growing cost of maintenance is a serious business problem. According to DuPont, “maintenance is the largest single controllable expenditure in a plant: in many companies it often exceeds annual net profit.” One major U.S. automotive manufacturer has a maintenance staff of between 15,000 and 18,000, all plants combined. They say, “85% to 90% is crisis work” (breakdown). While preventive maintenance, when well implemented, has been shown to produce savings in excess of 25 percent. Beyond that, its benefit quickly approaches a point of diminishing return. According to a Forbes Magazine study, one out of every three dollars spent on preventive maintenance is wasted. A major overhaul facility reports “60 percent of hydraulic pumps sent in for rebuild had nothing wrong with them.” These inefficiencies are the result of maintenance performed in accordance with a schedule (guesswork) as opposed to the machine’s true condition and need.
Let us help you cut down on maintenance costs and crisis work, which we have shown has saved millions of dollars with the companies that we have been involved with.
What is Proactive?
Proactive maintenance is a cost-saving trend toward a maintenance program that targets the root causes of machine wear and failure. Proactive methods are currently saving industries of all sizes thousands, even millions, of dollars on machine maintenance every year. Through 1 micron filtration and 100% water removal, the sand blasting effects of dirty oil under pressure are eliminated. The life of pumps and seals, etc. are also increased.
Laboratory and field tests show that more than any other factor, fluid contamination is the number one culprit of equipment failure. Even the most microscopic particles can eventually grind any machine to a halt. No discipline has previously taken a micro view on machine damage, concentrating on the causes, instead of the symptoms, of wear. Proactive maintenance is that discipline; and it is quickly being recognized worldwide as the single most important means of achieving savings, unsurpassed by conventional maintenance techniques. Proactive maintenance is presented as an important means to cure failure root causes and extend machine life.
Fluid contamination control through the installation and management of improved filtration systems for all lube, gear, hydraulic and turbine oils has been established as an essential method of implementing proactive maintenance. Substantial savings are based on case studies involving the installation of improved filtration applications.
Numerous examples of 10-fold maintenance cost improvements are given. Extend the life of your plant equipment, and save money doing it! Heat, moisture, air and particles literally rob fluids and lubricants of life. But with rigid contamination control practices, these fluids and lubricants can last indefinitely, which, in turn, prolongs the life of the machine’s components and keeps the machine running at the highest level of efficiency. Plus, the costs to begin a proactive contamination control program are quickly absorbed in maintenance cost savings.
Proactive “Life Extension” Maintenance
Proactive maintenance has now received worldwide attention as the single most important means of achieving savings, unsurpassed by any conventional maintenance techniques. The approach supplants the maintenance philosophy of “failure reactive” with “failure proactive” by avoiding the underlying conditions that lead to machine faults and degradation. Unlike predictive/preventive maintenance, proactive maintenance commissions corrective actions aimed at failure root causes, not just symptoms. Its central theme is to extend the life of mechanical machinery as opposed to (1) making repairs when often nothing is broken, (2) accommodating failure as routine and normal, or (3) preempting crises failure maintenance in favor of scheduled failure maintenance.
While the root causes of failure are many, or at least presumed to be, it is generally accepted that 10 percent of the causes of failure are responsible for 90 percent of the occurrences. Most often, the symptoms of failure mask the root cause, or they are presumed themselves to be the cause. For example, a sudden bearing failure is often blamed on poor quality or a bad lubricant. The root cause, on the other hand, is often contamination in the lubricant (bad filter), or faulty installation of the bearing.
When a machine is well designed and well manufactured, the causes of failure can generally be reduced to machine misapplication or contamination. And, among these two, contamination is clearly the most common and serious failure culprit. A great deal of laboratory proof and field confirmation now are available to support this fact. Therefore, the logical first-approach to proactive maintenance is the implementation of rigorous contamination control programs for lubrication fluids, hydraulic fluids, coolants, air, and fuel. The appropriateness and veracity of this maintenance strategy is emphasized below:
A. According to the bearings division of TRW, “contamination is the number one cause of bearing damage that leads to premature removal.”
B. Machine Design Magazine reports that “less than 10 percent of all rolling-element bearings reach the fatigue limit because contamination usually causes wear or spalling failure far earlier.”
C. According to Caterpillar, “dirt and contamination are by far the number one cause of hydraulic system failures.” J. I. Case states that “one thing holds true about hydraulic systems: the systems must be kept clean — spotlessly clean — in order to achieve the productivity they’re capable of.”
D. Protractive studies by the U.S. Navy show that the cost of contamination on marine and aviation equipment per operating hour exceeds 60 percent of the cost of fuel per hour on the same equipment.
E. Massachusetts Institute of Technology states, “six to seven percent of the gross national product ($240 Billion) is required just to repair the damage caused by mechanical wear.” Wear occurs as a result of contamination.
F. Oklahoma State University reports that when fluid is maintained 10 times cleaner hydraulic pump life can be extended by 50 times.
For more detail, please download this PDF article.