A good way to get a lubrication / hydraulic improvement program going is to start with a portable filtration cart. It should be used for transfers and filtering of fluids because, fluids are not clean enough for use right out of the barrel or tank. For convenience the hose ends should have appropriately sized self-sealing quick disconnects on them a male end on one hose and a female on the other. This way equipment can be set up to have quick disconnects installed to utilize the filter cart as a kidney loop. The system of having a one male and one female connector on the hose ends helps to ensure the unit gets hooked up properly each time.

For other ideas on how to start a program contact:

Clifford Spear

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If you have several production units in your plant and you have excess production capacity, that means that you will have to decide which units run and which ones stay idle.

That is a great opportunity to distance the necessary scheduled overhauls from one unit to the other. therefore maintenance costs are more spread over a wider time frame which is far more convenient and can be better managed than the usual case which is having the overhaul for all units done one after the other and therefore having all costs made over a much shorter time.

Reader tip provided by Teodoro Cuesta
Maintenance Manager
Soluziona O&M
Santo Domingo Dominican Republic

Thanks Teodoro - your Maintenance-Tips hat is on the way!

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When selecting an online vibration analysis system, be sure to purchase a system which will allow the user to select a variety of sensors such as current line drive (CLD), ICP, 4..20 mA, proximity probes, thermocouples,etc. When you choose a system that has this much flexibility, you’re maximizing the capabilities of acquiring data on most machinery.

Tip provided by LUDECA, INC.
ALIGNMENT * VIBRATION * BALANCING
http://www.ludeca.com
Tel: 305-591-8935

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How to save time generating reports

With each new generation of thermographic camera the time needed to generate reports is reduced. For example, the introduction of onboard digital recording eliminated the need for Polaroid screen shots and analog video recording. Another more recent example is in camera data logger software that eliminates the need for ineffective voice recording.

1. Use templates that automatically load thermal and visible images.

2. Record images with the appropriate measurement tools on the image. Some systems will automatically recreate in the report software the same analysis and report the result to a table in the report template.

3. Record images with file names that have some reference to the equipment inspected. If your camera does not have this feature use a small notebook and create a cross-reference list to the default file names assigned by the camera.

4. Use automatic multi-page report generation software or create your own macros in MS Word if possible.

5. If your camera has the ability to create data recording fields use them consistently

6. Create a permanent link between the IR image and visible control photograph

Follow these practices and you should be able to generate a 20-page report in less than 2 minutes.

Tip provided Electrophysics
Tel: (973) 882-0211

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Determining if Your Power Station is Sufficient

When using CSA (Current Signature Analysis) it is useful to look for events that will tell if the power station is providing enough to drive the loads or feeder cables sections to the machines sufficiently. What needs to be done is correlation of the current, voltage and load graphs at the same time. With this increased current, increased load, and voltage drop can be recognized. If this is found, it might indicate an insufficient power condition.

When the load augments slightly and the feeder cables section is small, this causes an immediate voltage drop. In cases like this a saturation of the core happens with a resultant temperature increase.

By building a “skin” within the CSA software tool that shows the needed graphs appropriately many headaches can be avoided.

Tip provided by Baker Instrument
Tel: (800) 752-8272
http://www.bakerinst.com

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YOU WANT, HOW MUCH MONEY?

The end of the year is near. If your maintenance operation is based around the calendar year, you may want to consider the following to prepare for 2006.

Budget Development

You can’t operate without some sort of budget. Minimally, you need money for labor (employees or contracted services) and materials (items in house that you already own or buying parts and materials next year).

If you run maintenance with or without a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), the issues are very similar. However, if you have a CMMS, budget development may be much easier and the system itself may need some “year end” attention.

So, if you have a computer based system, you may not need to read this. You already have your budget done, right? And, it was based on the following, right?

REPORTING YOU SHOULD EXPECT FROM YOUR CMMS

Financial reports
Account Summary Report with Year To Date (YTD) totals for each valid account (account numbers and descriptions provided by the Accounting Department), which are arrived at by the CMMS accumulating all Work Order and Purchase Order activity. Sorted by Account Number and totaled at the bottom. This shows you how much money you spent from each bag of money the front office provided access to.

Equipment Cost reports
Equipment Cost Summary reports, with YTD totals for each piece of Equipment that you have done work on during the year. This listing should specify total labor costs (employee and contractor) and total materials costs (from stock or purchased as needed) as well as the combined total. The equipment/assets should be sorted according to the most costly equipment to maintain, to the least costly. The individual totals reflect the cost to maintain those pieces of equipment and the accumulated total should reflect the cost of doing the maintenance work in 2005. Also, the total will not likely match the total of the Account Summary, because it is not likely that all parts and materials purchased throughout the year, were used……but, remain in the storeroom/stockroom.

Inventory reports
Inventory Cost Summary report should total how much money you have tied up in repair parts, materials, supplies and spares. This should make up the vast difference between the totals generated for the two preceding reports. Trending the “total” value will provide feedback as to the effectiveness of your efforts to standardized parts/materials, consolidate vendors, control inventory traffic and support a proactive maintenance program (predictive, preventive, TPM, RE, etc).

Failure Analysis reports
Various reports should be available to identify those pieces of equipment that need more maintenance resources and those that require less (so you can appropriately make adjustments to your budget requests, based on facts). Coupled with the Cost to Maintain reports, the CMMS should be able to produce Failure Rate and Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) reports. These reports can identify how often pieces of equipment fail (availability) and how long they’ll run after fixed (dependability). Those pieces of equipment with high maintenance costs, may or may not have high failure rates or short MTBFs. It is also possible to spend too many resources on maintenance efforts that achieve marginal, if any, added benefits.

Manpower projections
With your preventive maintenance data as a base, the CMMS should be able to project the manhours of “preventive”/ ”repetitive” work. Coupling this with a projection of the current backlog, the system should be able to reasonably project your workload for 2006.

Materials projections
Assuming that your CMMS has the capability of, and that you have estimated the materials for, ”preventive”/”repetitive” work, the system should also be able to, at least, project the dollar value of pats and materials need for the execution of these tasks.

Outside resources
By analyzing Purchase Orders from 2005, you should be able to determine how much of that manpower and materials had to be obtained “from the outside”.

Armed with this information, and the ability to “drill down” into the work order or purchasing data that forms the foundation of the reports, you should be able to make pretty reliable decisions as to what money you need for what. Just remember those “special projects” and capital improvement. Don’t let them slip a budget by you that include this kind of work without an account number (and money) that will pay for it. Ask Peter. He’ll pay Paul.

Tip provided by Glen Veno
Ashcom Technologies, Inc
http://www.ashcomtech.com/

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