Maintenance Technology May 2015 - 24

FROM OUR PERSPECTIVE

Protecting Your Golden Goose
KEN BANNISTER / Contributing Editor
kbannister@engtechindustries.com
Who among us is not familiar with Aesop's Fables? One of
my favorites is "The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs," a
poignant tale of greed and ignorance that has major implications for industrial operations.
The story involves a farmer who was fortunate to own a
goose that produced one solid-gold egg every day. In his myopic quest to accumulate even more wealth, the man decided
to kill the bird and plunder the treasure source that he believed was in its belly. As he eventually discovered, however,
the golden treasure was actually in the eggs themselves, and
could only be increased by keeping the goose alive. (The English may have summed up the moral of this story best with
the following well-known idiom: "Do not perform a short-sighted action that might destroy the profitability of an asset!")
Analyze this fable deeper and you will recognize that the
farmer ignored the fact that the goose he cared for was the
asset that made him profitable: Alas, without the goose, there
are no eggs.

Physical assets-like a site's production
machines-must be cared for on a
daily basis. They are the "golden
goose" of a production facility!
With regard to physical assets-like a site's production
machines that are expected to reliably "deliver the goods"
per their design specifications, day in and day out-we must
care for them on a daily basis. After all, they are really the
"golden goose" of a production facility! But are we tending
them adequately?
In December 2014, this publication shared the first scorecard for the state of lubrication practices in North American
industries. Results were disappointing, with the response
indicating a score of 43 out of a possible 100. If accurate,
that means, in real terms, that mechanical losses due to inef-

LUBRICATION TECHNOLOGY MAY 2015
LubricationTechnologyOnline.com

Lubricants are the life-blood of industrial
equipment systems. They should be
viewed as a critical component that
plays a principal role in the uptime,
throughput and rate of quality success
of any facility's operational machinery.

fective lubrication practices could have cost North America's
plants $1 trillion last year! That's an unacceptable price tag
when virtually every facility is looking internally to cut costs.
Plant management, regardless of sector, should be angry
about the economic impact of these losses-especially when
they are so easily preventable, and with little or no capital
outlay.
Lubricants are the life-blood of industrial equipment
systems. They should be viewed as a critical component that
plays a principal role in the uptime, throughput and rate of
quality success of any facility's operational machinery.
I have toured hundreds of plants over the course of my
career and am amazed by the cavalier and reckless attitude
toward lubrication that I continue to see. Too many managers
remain ill-informed regarding: 1) the benefits of effective lubrication; 2) the staggering cost of ineffective lubrication; and 3)
how inexpensive it is to implement an engineered lubrication-management program.
Management can take this to the bank: Placing unmarked
grease guns full of unmarked lubricants into the hands of
untrained personnel and telling them to manually fire at will
into remote bearing points does not constitute an effective
lubrication program. Instead of saving money, this type of
shortsighted approach will destroy the profitability of a plant's
assets!
The "wheels of industry" today rely on lubricant films
mere microns in thickness. Thus, it is essential that management of our operations becomes better informed about good
lubrication practices and the fact that they must be deployed
daily to protect our "golden geese." Good Luck! LT
Special Section

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Maintenance Technology May 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Maintenance Technology May 2015