Justifying Your Oil Analysis Program
As you put together any type of predictive maintenance technology like an oil analysis program, you need to justify the program. One common way of justifying oil analysis is keeping records of all predictive oil changes, filtration requests, dehydration requests, and so on. For example, the goal may be to improve the overall fluid cleanliness levels in the plant’s hydraulic press by using improved filtration. In this case, oil analysis — and specifically the particle count data — becomes a performance metric that can be used to measure compliance with the stated reliability goals. The metrics provide justification and accountability, not just for those directly involved with the oil analysis program, but also for the whole plant, sending a clear message that lubrication and oil analysis are an important part of the plant’s strategy for achieving both maintenance and production objectives.
You also need to annually evaluate your oil analysis program’s effectiveness, which includes a cost-benefit evaluation of money saved by avoiding maintenance issues or machine downtime due to oil analysis. Evaluation allows for continuous improvement of the program by realigning the program with either preexisting or new reliability objectives.
