|
Transitioning to a New Lube Supplier
Herb Springer, Engineer, Southern Company
Reliability should be the first thing considered when choosing
a replacement lubricant supplier. I would research Supplier B
and talk with several of their current customers in my industry
and learn of their experiences. If Supplier B's customers where
pleased with their lubricants' reliability, I would conduct extended
tests in a few pieces of equipment to ensure plant personnel that
we were making the right decision to do business with Supplier
B.
In order to address the issue of compatibility and the possibility
of using the wrong oils, a full lube audit should be done to determine
what Supplier A lubricants are used and where they are in service.
Then, a list of comparable lubricants from Supplier B should be
compiled. A lube manual containing all lubricated equipment listed
with the lubricant from Supplier A as well as the compatible Supplier
B lubricant should be published and maintained. All personnel
responsible for handling lubricants (lubers, mechanics, electricians,
etc.) should attend some sort of transition awareness meeting.
If it isn't feasible to get all of those people together at one
time, then I would talk about these issues with each one of them
face to face. They should be made aware of the lube manual and
its location as well as how to use it.
All of a particular type Supplier A lube should be used first
before introducing any of the compatible Supplier B lubricant
to the plant equipment. This means working with the plant warehouse
to ensure that a Supplier B lubricant is released only after all
of the compatible lube from Supplier A is depleted.
During a shutdown, entire trains of the smaller equipment could
be drained of Supplier A lube and filled with new Supplier B lubes.
For greased components, a thorough cleaning to remove all Supplier
A grease should be performed before introducing grease from Supplier
B. I would continue oil analysis on the large circulating systems
and only do an oil change when the need arises. I would also continue
using Supplier A lubes in the large components as long as there
was enough available onsite. There is no need to not use good
oil just because you're changing brands.
Throughout the process, it's imperative to continually update
the lube manual to reflect changes in the equipment. Once Supplier
A's lube has been removed from a component, remove it as an option
in the lube manual. To make the process as painless as possible,
you could label the machinery components with its current lubricant.
Once a change is made to a particular piece of equipment, the
corresponding label would be changed.
Feedback is essential to making the process go as smooth as possible.
Update affected personnel on the progress of the transition on
a regular basis. Let them know what has changed and what the next
steps in the lubricant changeover process are.
Following these steps will maximize the use of the remaining
Supplier A lubes while transitioning to Supplier B lubes. Since
we're all concerned about the bottom line, we want this process
to go off without a hitch while we squeeze ever last dollar from
all of our resources.
See other responses
to this Readers Challenge.
|
