Lubrication Best Practices

 I just look at the section about lubrication best practices (BIC Lubrication) on the webpage of Lubrilys (www.lubrilys.co.uk), this section includes advice and videos.

 I think the info of this webpage is excellent and I recommend it as a reference to lubrication management in a plant.

 The section of Best Practices includes 9 steps focussed to reduce the maintenance costs, to increase the life of machines and energy saving, to reduce downtime and storeroom costs, and to increase the productivity of the maintenance team. The steps are:

1. To implement a proactive program, to identify best practices and problems, document the problems and look for solutions, producing cost - benefits studies, and implementing them if they are appropriated.

2. To set up lubrication performance indicators, track performance and report regularly, we must know the real-time progress of our lubrication plan.

3. To implement a storage and handling plan, a lot of lubrication problems are related to lube contamination during storage and handling phases. A good solution to avoid problems can be to implement a prevention plan, that must include 5S basics.

4. Lubricants consolidation, to avoid application error risks and provide big stock savings. To do it you must know the lubrication requirements, to group similar lubricants them and keep in mind the lubricant's incompatibilities.

5. To optimize the lubricant management, to ensure the right lubricants are used, right quantities, right places, and the right time. Specifically designed software can be needed.

6. To implement a lubricant analysis plan, it must include sample procedures, analysis protocols, alarms, and limits.

7. To perform in-house analysis, using portable analysis kits to analyze the most critical parameters, these kits allow us to perform qualitative analysis.

8. To control the contamination, in this video you can see the main topics, they must include the lubricant reception, it identification by colors, to ensure the cleanliness level by filters, avoid water and contaminants by breather and dry filters, and control it by oil analysis.

9. Lubrication automation, to ensure the lubrication level and minimize error risks, to reach the maximum reliability and efficiency, it can include Minimum Quantities Lubrication - MQL and ANSI/API STD 614 lubrication systems.