Today’s reliability-conscious world demands a proactive mindset that goes beyond reactive fixes and embraces the aspirational goal of machine longevity.
The Ascend Chart emerges as a robust roadmap for organizations seeking to transition from the reactive to the proactive in their maintenance strategies.
The Shift Towards Reliability
The maintenance landscape is changing, and the focus is shifting from embracing failures to preventing them. The journey towards reliability begins with a commitment to quality at the foundation, ensuring machines are designed and manufactured for sustainable, long-term operation. Precision installation and maintenance become the following steps, encompassing various critical factors such as consistency, accuracy, and lubrication excellence.
Understanding Proactive Maintenance
Proactive maintenance goes beyond condition monitoring, focusing on preventing underlying causes of machine failures. Unlike reactive maintenance, which responds to problems, it aims to stop faults and abnormal wear before they occur, promoting a mindset of extending machine life rather than just repairing it.
Simple Steps of Proactive Maintenance
Implementing proactive maintenance involves a three-step approach:
- Set Your Target for Change: Define measurable and verifiable targets that exceed past practices or conditions. The goal is to be ‘okay’ and achieve machine improvements like cleaner, cooler, and drier operations.
- Implement Targeted Changes: Enact changes that align with the set targets. The focus is on tackling root causes through better filtration, improved lubricants, and enhanced inspections, emphasizing lasting improvements.
- Measure and Verify: Regular measurement and verification are essential. If a target is worth setting and changes are worth implementing, they are worth measuring. This step ensures that the desired improvements are achieved and maintained.
This systematic approach ensures that proactive maintenance becomes ingrained in the organizational culture, leading to tangible benefits and cost savings.
The Power of the Ascend Chart
The Ascend Chart is a valuable tool designed to guide organizations through the stages of a proactive maintenance strategy in lubrication. Its six lifecycle stages offer specific opportunities for change and control. Let’s explore some examples within these stages:
- Lubricant Selection: Matching the correct lubricant to machine specifications is crucial. The Ascend Chart emphasizes the engineering exercise required for optimal lubricant selection, considering factors like viscosity, base oil type, and additive chemistry.
- Lubricant Reception and Storage: The health and protection of lubricants during reception and storage are often overlooked. The Ascend Chart highlights the importance of maintaining lubricant quality from when it arrives, as this phase can impact lifespan.
- Lubricant Handling and Application: Proper lubricant application, including timely changes and relubrication, plays a pivotal role in machine health. The Ascend Chart advocates for avoiding under-lubrication and over-lubrication, emphasizing the impact even slight changes can have on machine life.
- Contamination Control and Lubricant Relubrication: This stage emphasizes the continuous task of keeping lubricants clean, dry, and cool. Effective contamination control and rapid removal of contaminants are critical aspects, with oil analysis serving as a verification tool.
- Condition Monitoring, Lubricant Analysis & Troubleshooting: The Ascend Chart acknowledges that machines rarely experience trouble without first signalling the lubricant. Frequent and proper oil analysis and meticulous inspection practices are essential for detecting issues before they escalate.
- Health & the Environment: Energy conservation is intertwined with lubrication practices. The Ascend Chart recognizes the potential for significant cost savings through intelligent lubricant choices and established lubrication practices that reduce frictional losses.
Optimization vs. Maximization
Excessive training, cleanliness, or sampling can waste resources. Instead, proactive maintenance should focus on optimizing reliability finding the balance that maximizes benefits without unnecessary costs. An optimization mindset ensures efficient resource use and sustainable reliability improvements.
Ascend Chart Unveiled
Adopting a proactive mindset through the three steps setting targets, implementing changes, and measuring results helps organizations achieve long-term machine longevity and operational efficiency. CRE Philippines can be a valuable partner in guiding this transition.
CRE Philippines introduces a two-phase Lubrication Program Development created in partnership with Noria to ease a seamless transition towards proactive maintenance excellence. In Phase 1: ASCENDTM Benchmarking, organizations enjoy a comprehensive assessment of their current lubrication program, benchmarked against industry best practices. Leveraging a 500-point survey and the ASCENDTM Method, CRE Philippines delivers tailored recommendations to enhance 40 critical elements of the lubrication program. Phase 2: Program Engineering takes a proactive stance, with CRE Philippines designing and standardizing step-by-step procedures for each lubricated asset, ensuring seamless implementation for technicians. The result is a detailed database encompassing improvement recommendations, work procedures, lubricant suggestions, and hardware modifications.
A prime example is Blue Buffalo, which, with Noria, achieved lubrication excellence at their Richmond plant through thorough inspections, contamination control, and optimal lubrication practices from day one. This case highlights CRE Philippines’ and Noria’s commitment to best practices, making our Lubrication Program Development a benchmark for reliability and maintenance efficiency.
Embarking on this collaborative journey with CRE Philippines transforms your lubrication program into a cornerstone of operational excellence and sets the stage for a future where reliability is not a distant goal but an integral part of daily operations. Contact us today and take the first step towards elevating your organization’s efficiency and machinery longevity.
Source:
Fitch, J. (n.d.). Using the Ascend Chart as Your Roadmap to Proactive Maintenance. Machinery Lubrication. https://www.machinerylubrication.com/Read/32563/using-the-ascend-chart-as-your-roadmap-to-proactive-maintenance