CONTAMINATION REALIZATION: A CASE EXAMPLE AT A STEEL MILL

Condition monitoring, contamination control, lubrication excellence, and machine reliability are keywords that are often overused and misunderstood.

- Debasish Mukherjee

These words are far more relevant and encompassing in today’s business context, but only a handful of organizations globally are able to implement these concepts simultaneously and successfully while maintaining sustainability.

This process isn’t always easy, but organizations can achieve this through intense, thoughtful effort and collective teamwork, and the resulting successes and benefits are widely documented.

For example, let’s examine a case study with J.R. Simplot, a private food processing and agricultural company that owns and operates one of the largest high-grade phosphate mines in the Western United States.

A large fleet, including haul trucks, was needed to maintain the demanding mining operation schedule. On average, each engine had to be rebuilt every 15,000 operating hours, costing up to $160,000 per engine rebuild. This consumed nearly 70% of the company’s total maintenance budget.

The team recognized that poor lubrication practices and human error were the primary root causes of their engine failures, and they decided to make a change.

By prioritizing proper lubrication management standards and practices, the team increased the average operating hours between engine rebuilds by 37% to over 18,000 hours, leading to an annualized cost reduction of over $15,000. The team is currently working to increase the meantime between rebuilds to nearly 25,000 hours.

However, despite documented success case studies like this one, it has been observed that a new thought pattern is emerging.

Now, it seems that many organizations and leaders are more invested in talking about and promoting extending component life and practicing asset management and proactive maintenance on different platforms than implementing the needed changes.