Maintenance Technology May 2017 - 26

RELIABILITY STRATEGIES

Fig. 4. Pay Attention to Water in Oil
110

% Bearing Life Remaining

100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0

0

0.1

0.05

0.15

0.2

% Water in Oil
By the time you can see water in oil, the life of the bearing has been halved.

could continue the discussion," he
said, "but suffice it to say that there
is a great deal we can do to avoid
problems that arise due to imperfect maintenance and operating
practices."

#

2

Cause of Reliability
Problems: Desire and
organizational culture

It's one thing to understand all of
the above root causes. "It's another,"
Tranter observed, "to obtain approval
to establish standards and purchase all
of the tools, such as laser-alignment
systems, that enable technicians and
operators to do their jobs correctly. But
owning the tools and having standard
operating procedures won't solve the
problem." As he put it, the problem
will only be solved when technicians

and operators want to use those tools
properly and are given the time and
encouragement to do so.
Thus, the issue of "desire" and its
link to organizational culture must
be considered as a root cause of
self-inflicted reliability problems and
addressed accordingly.

#

1

Cause of Reliability
Problems: Inadequate
management support

Tranter believes a strong case could
be made that the root cause of all
failures derives from lack of seniormanagement support for a culture of
reliability. Without their support it will
be impossible to change the culture
and thus change behavior.
"Think about initiatives to improve
safety at your plant," he said. "If senior

management didn't support
them, would those initiatives have been successful?
Senior-management
support leads to people
being employed in safety
roles, investment in training
and tools, and posting
of signage that provides
warning and feedback on
progress, among other
things. It also keeps sites
from cutting corners that
would risk safety, and it
makes it clear how important safety is to the future of
the organization."
According to Tranter,
the type of management
support that drives safety at
0.25
a site needs to be leveraged to drive reliability
improvement. "Everyone
within the organization," he
said, "needs to understand
that reliability is critically
important to the organization and that
senior management will stand strong
when shortcuts that compromise
reliability are available." Without
adequate senior management support,
he concluded, meaningful culture
change won't occur, and reliabilityimprovement initiatives won't be able
to eliminate self-inflicted root causes of
problems. MT
Jason Tranter, BE (Hons), CMRP,
VA-IV is CEO and founder of Mobius
Institute (Balnarring, Victoria,
Australia, and Bainbridge Island, WA).
For more information on this topic
and other reliability issues, including
vibration monitoring and training
and certification of vibration analysts,
contact him at jason@mobiusinstitute.
com, or visit mobiusinstitute.com.

Acceptance testing weeds out reliability problems
that new equipment can bring into plants.
26 |

MAINTENANCE TECHNOLOGY

MAY 2017
http://www.mobiusinstitute.com
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Maintenance Technology May 2017
