The Value of a Platform Lubrication Dedicated to Program Management

With an industry increasingly focused on improving machine reliability through the deployment of best practices in lubrication and oil analysis, there is a need to establish better management tools to accomplish these objectives

- Bennett Fitch

Providing dedicated software solutions for maintenance and reliability professionals to manage lubrication is particularly critical with the advent of new innovative advancements in the age of Industry 4.0. Here’s why:

As a maintenance supervisor, there is the burden of responsibility to ensure equipment is being properly taken care of. You must rely on a sufficiently trained maintenance crew and the right tools to monitor activities, expenses, parts, lubricants, etc. Daily task execution has an opportunity to provide education in real time. For example, inspections should be accompanied by objective questions and picture examples to coach the inspector on best practices. Meanwhile, inspection results, route compliance, lubricant consumption and more can and should be automatically tracked.

As a maintenance planner, efficiently organizing work activities is important to help anticipate potential causes of delays and then plan the parts, labor and resources needed to improve productivity. This is necessary as planning lubrication activities requires complete awareness of the recurring needs of each machine, along with feedback from inspections and other condition monitoring findings to trigger on-condition tasks.

As a maintenance scheduler, managing the recurring route activities, such as regreasing bearings with ultrasonic techniques at various intervals, can be challenging. Doing so requires tools to merge and assign routes to available personnel with various viewing formats. As routes get assigned from a dedicated lubrication platform, they should automatically be made available on the technician’s mobile device, complete with all task detail, asset data, images, procedures, etc.