What are some quick wins for my reliability program?

Generally, improving reliability at your facility is a process that requires time. That said, there are a few tactics you can use to get almost immediate results for your facility, including:

• Improving lubrication
• Optimizing preventive maintenance
• Tightening STO (shutdowns, turnarounds, and outages) management
• RCA (root cause analysis)

Improve lubrication

Roughly 70% of all equipment failures result from lubricant contamination, making proper lubrication management a worthwhile investment. That can take a few forms:

• Storage practices – Desiccant breathers on equipment and color-coded dispensers prevent contamination.
• Oil filtration – Sometimes, contamination occurs before lubricant arrives at your facility. A filtration system helps mitigate that.
• Oil analysis – Regular oil analysis can minimize the effects of contaminated lubricant.

Optimize preventive maintenance

Often, preventive maintenance tasks are wasted. In fact, while most PMs are handled on a recurring schedule, 82% of assets appear to have random failure patterns.

PMs should be designed to handle those failure modes that tend to occur on a regular or predictable basis. Part of PM optimization may involve FRACAS or failure mode effect analysis (FMEA) to find the best way to streamline preventive maintenance tasks.

Tighten STO management

Shutdowns, turnarounds, and outages (or STO) can result in massive amounts of wasted time and resources, so keeping them to a minimum is a priority. There are a few ways to improve STO management, including:

• Hiring a shutdown manager to keep costs down and make efficient use of time.
• Using a single minute exchange of dies (SMED) methodology to perform lengthy tasks in just a few minutes.
• Implementing condition assessment practices.

RCA

Root cause analysis, particularly when performed in-depth after equipment failures, can go a long way toward targeting your maintenance practices toward the most essential tasks. When done properly, RCA helps you pinpoint issues that impede reliability, such as:

• Equipment-related issues
• Human errors
• Workplace culture factors
• Policies or practices

Pulling it all together

While they may each require a bit of planning, each of the above methods can improve reliability within months of implementation.