• Lubrication

By Haris Trobradović

Part 1: The Missing Link Between Condition Monitoring and Lubrication

• Two activities
• The same assets
• The same data
• One integrated reliability strategy

Condition Monitoring has transformed the way industry understands the health of its assets.

Measurement, contextualization, and analysis allow reliability teams to detect developing failures, understand asset condition, and make informed maintenance decisions.

Ultrasound, vibration analysis, infrared thermography, lubricant analysis, motor current analysis, and other technologies give us an increasingly detailed picture of what is happening inside our machines.

But there is a problem.

Condition Monitoring often has a capacity problem

Not every asset can be remotely and permanently monitored.

Across industrial plants, a large population of rotating assets still depends on periodic data collection using handheld instruments. CM engineers and technicians walk routes, collect measurements, analyze results, and decide what requires attention.

And CM teams are being asked to do more and more

• More assets
• More failure modes
• More technologies
• More data
• More analysis

But never, or rarely, more people.

Experienced analysts become overloaded with routine data collection and screening when their expertise should be focused on interpretation, diagnosis, and decision-making.

At the same time, condition monitoring knowledge often remains concentrated within a relatively small specialist team.

The consequence is familiar.

Asset coverage is limited. Use of different technologies is limited. Highly qualified people spend valuable time collecting data instead of analyzing it. And when experienced people leave, years of accumulated knowledge can disappear with them.

The traditional answer has been to find ways for the CM team to do more.

Integrated Condition Monitoring & Lubrication – I-CM&L asks a different question:

What if part of that work is already being done?

The lubrication team is already there

The rotating assets monitored for condition assessment are very often the same assets that require lubrication.

And lubrication itself is changing.

Traditional time-based lubrication is progressively giving way to Condition-Based Lubrication — CBL.

With Ultrasound-guided CBL, lubrication is no longer simply: “It is time to grease the bearing.”

It becomes a condition-based process:

• Measure the condition
• Determine the need
• Act when required
• Apply the correct amount
• Confirm the outcome.

That is in no way different from the philosophy behind Condition Monitoring.

And this is where the opportunity begins.

CBL is Condition Monitoring

The LUBExpert strategy takes ultrasound-guided lubrication far beyond listening to a bearing while adding grease.

Listen-only methods, subjective judgement, and anecdotal ultrasound checks cannot deliver the repeatability, traceability, and data quality required by a modern reliability program.

LUBExpert applies a Condition Monitoring mindset to lubrication.

• Assets are inspected regularly
• Condition is measured and trended
• Alarm levels adjusted per individual assets, based on data
• Lubrication is performed based on actual condition
• The quantity added is driven by the response of the bearing
• The result of the intervention is confirmed

And the data remains available for future decisions.

Data replaces opinion.

Condition replaces assumption.

Evidence replaces routine.

Continued in Part 2 of 4

SDT Ultrasound