Up Time Magazine- June/July 2008

Gearboxes An investigation into 322 gearbox overhauls at BlueScope Steel Port Kembla Steelworks, over a period of 12 months, showed that 2/3 of the overhauls were the result of lube related skills and practices issues4,5. The inescapable conclusion is that this significant expenditure is avoidable. Most people think that gearbox maintenance is normal, that it has to actually happen. But this is not the case. We do not have to put up with this! Experience within BlueScope Steel and BHP Billiton has demonstrated that significant life extension is possible through improved practices4, 5. As with bearings, if a gearbox is properly designed, installed and lubricated it can last indefinitely. having for decades. I suspect that the same applies to industry in general. The question is why? If all of these failures are avoidable, what are we doing wrong? Why do we still get failures despite the various strategies that we have in place? Our maintenance strategies include breakdown maintenance, preventive maintenance and predictive maintenance. A lot of effort goes into the process of deciding which one of these to apply. We might use SBM, RCM, PMO, or some other TLA. Unfortunately, the outcomes of these deliberations are maintenance plans designed to cater to the fact that there will be failures! Each time we want to “fix” our maintenance problems, we decide that what we did last time wasn’t the answer and we look around until we find someone else who is already doing what we now believe to be the right thing. The apparent success of that initiative convinces us that, yes, our current logic is the right answer. Then, in a few years time, when things still aren’t right, we repeat the process. This should tell us that we are missing something. Rather than looking for another new answer, let’s focus on getting the basics right and making Proactive maintenance and Precision maintenance a way of life. The solution is literally under our feet. We currently place our emphasis on identifying and correcting these issues: cavitation, cracking, degradation, heat, looseness, noise, pitting, oxidation, vibration, wear, wear debris. In other words, we simply treat the symptoms. We must shift our emphasis to: alignment, balance, bearings, compliance, contamination, lubrication, seals, tolerance and instructions and tools. In other words, we must focus on eliminating the root causes of those symptoms. The key word here is avoidance. Training First of all, we must raise the corporate IQ by increasing the amount of training that we do. Cranfield7 has shown the importance of training with his performance indices. The top 10% of companies do twice as much training as average companies, and 10 times as much training as the bottom 10% of companies. We have had a system for training apprentices and cadets for many years. This system is part of where we are now. So, by itself, it clearly isn’t enough. We have also had an employee development system, but it focused on developing additional competencies in our tradespeople. What we don’t have is a focus on what are termed “core” competencies. These core competencies are deemed to be present because an individual has completed a set course of study and experience. In general, there is no ongoing maintenance of these competencies. This must change. In safety matters, we have regular refresher training on safety issues, and we conduct safety audits on all manner of activities around the site. We need to learn from our safety experience and have refresher training and auditing of BASIC issues for all maintenance personnel. This refresher training does not need to take up great chunks of time. Each particular skill may only require a refresher every few years. And for many topics, the refresher may only require a couple of hours. For example, we recently had a major fire in an electrical basement. It was clear that we had the potential to introduce many defects if we didn’t crimp and splice the many cables correctly. So we took the time to get our suppliers to run short training sessions for the electricians immediately before they began these tasks. Electric Motors Electric motors also suffer from skills and practices issues. A 2-year survey on motor change-outs completed at BlueScope Steel Western Port6 revealed that for AC motors, 30% were replaced due to bearing problems and 40% were replaced for winding and/or insulation failures. For DC motors, 22% were replaced due to bearing problems and 56% were replaced for winding and/or insulation failures. This represents an enormous cost, which is utterly avoidable. Motors do not have to wear out. If properly selected, installed, lubricated, and kept clean and cool, they will last indefinitely. Flexible Couplings Flexible couplings wear out because of relative movement between the mating surfaces. If we practice precision alignment, we will reduce the relative movement and markedly increase the life of the coupling. However, to realize this increase, we must change the attitude that is prevalent among our maintenance trades about couplings. They say that couplings can cope with large amounts of misalignment, so why bother to do precision alignment? While it is true that couplings can physically accommodate varying amounts of misalignment, they don’t cope with significant misalignment for very long. Hence, in many cases, we get much less life from flexible couplings than we should. These key components, and others, cause us significant reliability problems. I believe that they are the same problems that we have been Reliability Walks Auditing of skills and practices issues can be completed through a process we call Reliability Walks. The Reliability Walk is an adoption of the Safety Audit process that many companies use. A Safety Audit involves having a discussion with someone who is carrying out a task, in order to identify any safety issues. A Reliability Walk is similar in that it involves having a discussion with someone who is carrying out a maintenance task in order to identify not only safety issues, but also opportunities for improvement in skills and Solutions It is one thing to identify the problem, but another thing entirely to identify the solutions. I don’t have all the answers, but I do have some thoughts on some of the fundamental issues. I am happy to share my thoughts and experiences, but I’d also like to learn from others about their approach to addressing these issues. 12 june/july 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Up Time Magazine- June/July 2008

Up Time Magazine- June/July 2008 Contents Upfront Upclose: The True Cause of Most Machine Failures Information Technology: Finding Future Perfect Lubrication: Building an Oil Analysis Winner Maintenance Management: Hidden Ways to Increase Safety Infrared: Air Barriers Lower Energy Costs, Increase Profits Motor Testing: Efficient Motor Repair, Part Deux Precision Maintenance: Good Maintenance, Smart Maintenance Reliability: Common Errors in Root Cause Analysis Ultrasound: Avoid the Baghouse Blues Vibration: Don't Let Your Sensors Get Eaten Alive Upgrade: Lining It All Up

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