Martin: Good afternoon Haris, how’re you doing?
Haris: Hello Martin, excellent! How are you?
Martin: Fantastic! Had my meds earlier from the nurse so I am all good to go. Side effects eliminated, back to my normal stupid self 😊. But I want to push things to the extreme this week, ok? Because there are times when the machine just, for whatever reason, lubrication is just not on the radar for that machine either because it doesn’t measure up in terms of risk or from financial perspective or even safety point of view, environmental point of view, it is just not critical. And so many people say to me – I want to put best practice in place on my critical machines. Now, I have a theory that, actually, if we get everything right, as we discussed in previous episodes, within the lube store – everything benefits, critical and non-critical, and there is payback as a result. How would you treat it in this situation where, perhaps, lubrication isn’t on the radar for LUBExpert?
Haris: I wouldn’t even touch it! No matter how it sounds insensitive, but if lubrication is not a failure mode, if it doesn’t affect asset health, I would not even touch it. If it has absolutely no effect to profit, people, or environment, let’s put these three groups as most important… any action we would be taking, is a waste of time, money, and all other resources that we need to put somewhere else. Spending time on that asset would be more like a hobby … and we have more important things to do.
Martin: Just mentioning it as an extreme… because often we hear the excuse: “Lubrication isn’t a problem on our side” and when challenged: “Of course, we have a lot of bearing failures”. Often, people pretend lubrication has no consequences and use it as an excuse.
Haris: Yes, good excuse is a great thing. That is what we both usually face, when values of failure… a total loss needs to be calculated and presented, then people look for excuses. That is one of the important problems in Lubrication practice. Nobody knows how much it costs.
Martin: Sure, but if we swing to the other side of extreme and it is a highly critical asset that perhaps has areas of concern financially, environmentally, safety wise – what about LUBExpert team and their approach, what attention would it get?
Haris: Not necessarily maximum attention. If asset is highly critical, but lubrication issues as failure mode are not recognized as likely cause… special attention of any lubrication expert will not bring much of a value. It’s same like in security: if you have a highly critical person is protected person, usually some kind of politician, right?
Doing a hearing test on that guy on daily basis does not improve safety at all.
The bulletproof vest does… but not hearing test.
If danger is coming from lubrication issues… lubrication team should be on extra alert, in case of critical assets. If it doesn’t – it doesn’t matter.
Martin: We agree on principle of Root Cause and Root Cause focus rather than band aid or sticking plaster solutions. Bring value or stay at home, as they say. This has been an interesting topic; are we looking to continue this next Monday then?
Haris: It seems so. So, let’s get our supplies of ice cream and coffee and continue next Monday.
Martin: That I can relate to!
Haris: Ok, see you soon!
Martin: Cheers, take care my friend!
