Haris: Hello Martin, happy Monday. How are you?

Martin: Hi Haris, how are you? I’m good.

Haris: In the mood for a new ice cream?

Martin: Yeah, sure. Always!

Haris: Ok, what do you have for me?

Martin: We decided not Macho, but Metro, was it? As opposed to Magnum?

Haris: Yes, yes, yes. Macho is a Croatian brand and it’s very good ice cream. Do you have something on your table that looks like ice cream?

Martin: No, but I’ll tell you what I got: milk shake! Look at that…

Haris: That looks like a lot of vegetables and very healthy.

Martin: Well, that’s actually, oil and water. In fact, it’s, you know, good old engine oil that’s green in colour mixed with some water, but you can see the water separating out. So, it’s all good, isn’t it? I mean, if we get water in your oil, it’s going to separate out, but it doesn’t really look pretty, does it?

Haris: Absolutely not.

Martin: You wouldn’t want that in your machine, would you?

Haris: Definitively not.

Martin: And that’s the thing, I think, sometimes, when you talk to engineers and maintenance guys, they always think water is the most destructive contaminant because, as we said in previous episodes, it’s the hidden enemy, particles. Nobody thinks of them as being the most destructive, because they just don’t see them. Whereas water, it’s visible, we can kind of see the problems that would create, and that is the whole issue here, isn’t it?

Haris: Yes, but the fact that we see it, doesn’t mean much, we have to remove it.

Martin: Yeah. The trouble is, I think guys tend to sort of accept: ‘well, the industry I work in is like this. It’s going to happen all the time, there’s nothing we can do about it.’

Haris: Yeah, and then that remove it once or twice, but they don’t remove the source, the cause and that it doesn’t make sense. So, this is why I wanted to talk to you about the storage. Each lubricant needs to be stored, to be in a good shape for our assets.

Martin: Yeah. You know, it’s not just about water either, I mean, I don’t know about you, but in places like the middle east, in the middle of summer, ambient temperature is fifty degrees centigrade. The oil supply has the drums stood out in bright sunlight at fifty degrees centigrade. That’s the supplier, never mind the customer doing the same thing.

Haris: Yes, I’ve seen that unfortunately.

Martin: So, you know, we have got to get that part of it right. And, I guess, that starts with the lube store, it’s the heart of the plant, it’s where, it’s like your heart, pumping the blood, pumping the lube around the site. And if we don’t get that part right, we are affecting all the machines, yet people still want to focus their best practice efforts on their critical machines and ignore the rest.

Haris: Yes. I’ve seen it very often, you know. We take care about critical, but we don’t take care about the rest, and then, you see, this unfortunate Pareto, Pareto split and, yes, most of the expensive failures happen on their critical machines but we have zillions of failures on the non-critical machines that cumulatively bring a huge loss. So, we are again in the same number.

Martin: Yeah. Definitely we want to try and get that right. Get the lubricant storage right, get the handling and the transfer of the lubricants right, apply best practice there and that’s a win-win across the site for everything, critical, non- critical machinery. We can move from that fire fighting reactive mode into that proactive mode, addressing root cause, and, you know, your oil analysis program will show that change, because it will reflect what’s been happening in the way of implementing best practice.

Haris: Exactly, am I right when I say, and I just want your confirmation if I can get it, am I right if I say that most of the contamination happen in the lube store during the storage of the lubricant?

Martin: To a degree, I think, depending on how bad the actual practices are. You know, again, the machines themselves probably had issues that need to be addressed, the seals, the breathers etc. We need to close all the ingress points, but yeah, I think, ah, as much contamination happens in the lack of housekeeping in the lubricant store, as it does at the machine interface.

Haris: Yeah. So, lube store is something that we can do a lot about, so, it’s a low hanging fruit, we can do something fast, we can make it quite simple and easy, add successful program and have a huge benefit.

Martin: Yeah, and I guess that something to talk about is the perception that that creates as well.

Haris: Excellent. So, thank you for this discussion was very fruitful, very interesting and I hope I can get your next Monday through to sit and talk to me.

Martin: I’m sure we can be there on time as usual.

Haris: Thank you, see on next Monday!