August 23, 2007
Motor Maintenance Tip
DC Motor Maintenance Tech Tip
On occasion, repair and maintenance companies will use silicone lead wire or silicone sealant on motor openings in dirty environments. When these items are used with DC electric motors or generators, the silicone vapor, regardless of the amount, will cause rapid wear of brushes and the commutator bars. The carbon and copper dust will permeate the motor armature causing a premature ground or failure.
When having a DC motor repaired, ensure that you specify that no silicone components are to be used.
Howard W Penrose, Ph.D., CMRP
SUCCESS by DESIGN Reliability Services
800 392-9025 ext 201
http://www.motordoc.net
August 23, 2007
Lubrication Tip
To help with the cross-contamination of your gearbox oils we have used colored stickers on the containers that correspond to the colored stickers on the gearbox that the maintenance people are filling up with oil.
This is very important we you are using synthetic oils, the stickers have the name on them as well.
Reader tip provided by Paul Brooker
Condition Monitoring Technician
Green Triangle Forest Products
Mount Gambier, South Australia
Editor’s Note: All the good reader tips seem to be coming from Australia - good on ya!
Thanks for the tip Paul - your Maintenance-Tips hat is on the way!
August 23, 2007
PM / PdM Best Practices Workshops
Now you can transform your preventive and predictive maintenance programs into best practices with a new series of training and workshops from Allied Reliability.
Here’s your chance to go behind the scenes and learn how to apply the secrets from the most successful PdM programs - and program managers - in the world.
You’ll find out how this new series of workshops is uniquely different from all the other PdM training you’ve ever seen.
Classes start October 30th in Charleston, South Carolina.
Contact Amy Campbell at: 888-414-5760 to request a special discount for early registration before September 28th.
August 23, 2007
Root Cause Analysis (RCA) Tip
A common trap when investigating a problem is to look for the root cause of a problem in the belief that all we need to do is to find and address it, and our problem is solved. Bit like asking why five times and addressing the fifth cause.
It is a bit like looking for the “right solution”, as if there is one right solution and all I need to do is to find it.
Unfortunately, root cause is a misnomer because for any problem there are many causes. It is our ability to identify as many of the main causal paths as possible in order to find an effective solution that prevents recurrence, that meets our goals and is within our control to implement, that will determine a successful RCA.
So avoid use voting systems or consensus as typically these will be steered by the stronger personalities in the group.
Seek to clearly define the problem and understand the cause and effect relationships in a way that others can also understand, and support those causes with evidence, that leads you to possible solutions.
Tip provided by Mick Drew, Director ARMS Reliability Engineers
August 23, 2007
Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) Tip
The Financial Factor
Funding for new initiatives like an RCM program either comes from a corporate budget, or at the very least may require a corporate-level approval of development expenditures that are resident in a plant budget. You may also find that everyone is apparently positive about the introduction of RCM, but no one is willing to pay for it.
We have all too often heard responses to the effect that “we can’t afford it”. The job then becomes one of convincing the decision-makers that they “can’t afford not to have it”. How is this done?
There are several parameters that influence a credible answer to this question, but the answer in a nutshell is ROI – Return On Investment. What will it cost, and what will e the payback? Let’s examine the ROI question more closely.
There is a need to focus our PM resources (costs) on decreasing the CM incidents (costs) and increasing output (profit) by reducing forced outages (i.e., downtime). This latter factor is by far the big swinger in this financial picture. A brief downtime analysis, based on a very conservative estimate, will place ROI quickly into perspective. We find that all of our clients measure a one-day loss of output in the $100,000 per day range and up – a nuclear plant, for example, must purchase about $800,000 of replacement electricity when it goes unexpectedly off-line for one day. We suggest that a saving of just one day of downtime essentially represents the breakeven point for implementing a comprehensive RCM-based PM program. More realistically, our clients have measured the following benefits (ROI):
· Downtime reductions of 40 percent and up.
· CM cost reductions of 30–50 percent.
· Items of Interest (IOI) paybacks of $100,000 and up.
All of these benefits are annual paybacks. If you agree with these values (or if you wish, only one-half of these values), how can you afford not to implement an RCM program!?
Tip provided by Anthony “Mac” Smith
Author - RCM - Gateway to World Class Maintenance
Find out more about the Anthony “Mac” Smith RCM Workshop on DVD
August 16, 2007
Web Workshop: Recruiting and Training Personnel for Predictive Maintenance (PdM) Positions
Please join Jack R. Nicholas Jr., CMRP for the 7th of a 10 part series of Predictive Maintenance (PdM) Program Management.
In the 7th Workshop Jack discusses:
* Recruiting in the face of opposition
* Overcoming reluctance to train and retain
* Training plan for PdM specialists
* Essential qualifications for PdM personnel
Fee: $0
Space is limited.
August 16, 2007
Root Cause Analysis (RCA) Tip
Root Cause Analysis (RCA) Rule of Thumb – If you are not collecting evidence to support all of your hypotheses, you are not doing RCA!
Tip provided by Bob Latino
Reliability Center Inc.
http://www.reliability.com
iPresentation Invitation: When time is of the essence, is evidence expensed?
August 16, 2007
Save Green by going Green: EAM for a Green Strategy
A White Paper by Infor
What if your company could reduce facility energy spend by 6% to 11%, provide a demonstrable commitment to environmental sustainability and increase bottom line profitability — would you be interested? Efficient assets minimize energy use and improve productivity.
August 16, 2007
Infrared Tip
Leave a Paper Trail
Today’s’ sophisticated infrared cameras come with impressive software packages that would seem to eliminate the need for some paper trails.
Even with all this hi tech sophistication, we at JM McPherson still love a paper trail. This is especially true when it comes to field work. Whenever we are out with our infrared camera we take our “Field Work Report Forms” with us.
We developed our own field work report forms for several reasons including:
• We can easily take them with us on all Initial & Reshoots
• Sometimes we need detailed information
• Sometimes we need additional information
• Sometimes we want special notes
• Sometimes we want certain formulas to do some occasional computations
• We have faulty memories!!!
We have standardized our field work report forms into templates where we always include our electrical formulas and severity level criteria. We manually record such things as:
• Fault Description
• Fault Location
• Route # & W.O. #
• Fault, Reference, dT., Ambient Temperatures
• Voltages, Actual Load, Rated Load
• Severity Level of Fault as noted in the Field
• Thermal & Visual Picture Name(s)
Stone Age or not, these filled out forms have come in handy several times as needed references.
Call us “Stone Age” but we love our “Field Work Report Forms”.
Do it too!
Reader tip provided by Nick Bohonik
Reliability Tech: Level 1 Thermographer
Johns Manville
McPherson, Kansas
Editor’s note: This plant was the Uptime Magazine Infrared Program of the Year Award Winner in 2006!
Thanks for the tip Nick – It sounds like you still have a heck of a program! Your Reliabilityweb.com Stainless Steel Diamond Plate Coffee Mug is on the way!
August 16, 2007
Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) Tip
“One of the reasons why RCM studies stall is that too much analysis takes place before benefits are realized. This really stresses the stakeholders and project sponsors in being able to continue investing resources into a study before benefits are realized. So when initiating an RCM study as part of a reliability improvement initiative, select a small ‘bite-size’ system that has the potential to provide a significant impact to the business. This way, the stake holders will be more likely to buy into the process and support further studies. One way to identify high-impact areas is to construct high level Reliability Block Modeling (RBD) and use downtime records to identify the ‘bottle-neck’ areas.
This is powerful when simple Pareto charts do not provide guidance, and so useful for complex plants that may have multiple levels of redundancy or buffers. ”
Tip provided by Mick Drew, Director ARMS Reliability Engineers,
