Reliability Maintenance Engineering

[redneckdan]

Hi all yall.

Anyone here have much experience with reliability maintenance engineering? I have been tasked with developing a maintenance program at the plant where I work. Just looking for some advice and ideas on where to start.

thanks

-Dan

[GREENCOUNTYPETE]

one place to start is with the manual for every piece of equipment you have , following the recommended maintenance , cleaning , lube changes , greasing , ect..

it depends a lot on what you do , and what your equipment is


then good record keeping is key , in time your records will tell you when things are going to fail , then you replace them before they fail.

your also looking for when manufactures expect their parts to fail , as an example we have dc power supplies that are expected to fail between 3 and 5 years , if i had the budget and the down time would negatively impact my production , then i would be replacing them every 3 years , and always have a spare on hand , rotating my spare into the next one i replaced with the new one i ordered becoming the spare.

[DCM]

Pete said it very well.

Good record keeping is HUGE in so many ways.

[geargnasher]

+2 to what Pete said. If you're starting from scratch, you'll be tasked with not only needing to find out what needs to be done with each piece of equipment, but with developing a plant-wide maintenence routine along with lubrication selection, inspection checklists, replacement parts supply, shutdown schedules that coordinate with production and shifts as well as assessing your maintentance manpower availability and requirements. Without specifics, it's difficult to say exactly what you're going to be up against, but get your hands on every scrap of information you can, and learn the ins and outs of every process and piece of equipment in the plant.

Other details might come up, like evaluating pattern failures with particular components and coming up with a solution, and streamlining your maintenance chemical supply to reduce cost (i.e. reducing the number of greases you have on hand). Be prepared to source companies that specialize in failure analysis as well as all manufacturer tech support lines, and get on a first-name basis with those companies. You will need to have your ducks in a row when unexpected breakdowns occur, and knowing ahead of time the calls you need to make will save everyone headaches. I know this sounds a lot like the job of "head of maintenance", but you'll need to know his job as well or better than he does to be able to track what goes on and improve the maintenance and repair. You and that guy need to become good friends and build a mutual trust so you can streamline and improve the operation he oversees.

Gear

[tomme boy]

Make sure to also talk to the maintenance mechanics and electricians. They know what usually breaks an what does not. You also need to talk to production schedule person to find out when down time is to be expected.

Also you need to identify what PM's are to be done by the operators, an what is to be done by maint. personnel. Having production doing simple lubing an greasing can let the maint. mech do more important things at that time.

Every place I have worked at as a maintenance mechanic, we always did the PM's an cleaning on the 2nd an 3rd shifts. One thing that really helped me was to have a list on every machine on what was done to it. This stayed at the machine. Whenever any part was replaced, it was logged into the list. That way the mechanic can see right off what was going on.

[MtGun44]

Excellent recommendations. When buying equipment that is absolutely critical to plant
operation, many would buy a spare unit (say a pump). If the spare is cheap, then this is
pretty good. If it is expensive, consider installing three units with capability to each carry
50% of the load. You run two units, with the third plumbed or wired in but off. When one unit
fails, you switch/valve in the spare and pull the failed unit for replacement or overhaul.
Your cost of spares is half of what it would be with a full sized spare and reliability is nearly
identical.

Another thing is understanding what the cost of the unit being down really is. We had some
chemical units that produced $100,000 per day of product in the 70s. We were willing to spend
quite a bit to keep them up or worst case, down for no more than an hour or so.

Bill

[GREENCOUNTYPETE]

often vendors for major systems hold training classes , i teach 2 a year for my product line and it's peripherals , try to get them to budget in those trainings , having a trained tech who knows that system reduces down time and then you can task that person with drawing up a recommended maintenance schedule for that piece of equipment.


maintenance is also now more than just oil and grease , replacing parts , electrical contacts ans switches , more and more it is making software or firmware upgrades , and getting backups of system configurations the computer and mechanical world are now very intertwined in many things

[Frank46]

I did work at a water treatment plant for boiler washes. Only had two pumps to pump out the pits. After the first pump failed and the shops could not disassemble due to concretions both external and internal, and taking into account the costs of having to remove and replace the damaged pump it was cheaper to get two extra spares and change them out whenever another pump needed to be serviced. This way we could keep running at our rated capacity and still have a spare while the other could be repaired. Course this was some 17 years ago so don't know what program they are following now. Fuel oil pumps were another story. they followed a regular program except when a mechanical seal was starting to fail. Switched from ceramic and carbon to tungsten and silicon carbide and seal life was almost doubled. That and always having hot oil up to the seal for lubrication to prevent a dry start. Frank

[Echo]

And interview not only the maintenance folks, but also the folks that actually run the equipment. And consider membership in the American Society for Quality - Quality means reduced variability, and that leads to improved reliability, &cetera. There is a lot to be learned...

(Retired CQE, CQA, and QSA)

[Blacksmith]

There are canned software programs you can buy to help with record keeping and scheduling. Some vendors can be a big help for example one plant had a team from a lubricant company come in and set up a complete lubrication schedule for all the machinery in exchange for a contract to buy all the lubricants from them. Other vendors will help for example bearing supply companies will help identify bearings that will cover more spare parts by exceeding some requirements, individual part costs a little more but cheeper than stocking 3 or 4 different but similar bearings. Lots of help if you ask for it.

[WILCO]

All top notch advice from a great group of folks.

[Silver Eagle]

Find out what the "real world" maintenances are by talking to: the maintenace people, the machine operators, and any people outside the company that work on the equipment
Sometimes you will find out that the manufacturers specs and the real world specs are not in line at all.
Also look for and document any tips from those that service the equipment. They can give you things that they have found that make it more reliable or easier to maintain.
Document everything! Get all manuals, service records. purchase and warranty info. Be able to produce your maintenance info if you need to have anything fixed, either in or out of warranty.
Check for any existing service contracts and what they entail. Some companies will not honor warrantees if any service was not done by an "authorized" service.

Silver Eagle

[popper]

Ask for a raise and say goodbye to the wife and kids for a while. Honestly, if the plant is just getting around to this you are going to have problems. What the others say - but!

[redneckdan]

Thank you everyone for the advice. This plant does have a maintenance program of sorts. The iron industry went kaput in the 80s and a lot of the salaried people were let go. Lots of job planners, reliability people, etc... So the 'program' that was in place continued based on institutional inertia....kinda... Nobody really knows what is going in work groups other than their own. Oil and grease analsys is being done...but there is no program in place for tracking the results. Lots of information is still stuck in AS400, trying to transfer it to TABware and then there is a rumor of a change from TABware to something else. Almost seems better to scrap the whole thing and start from scratch :killingpc

[Blacksmith]

It's called an opportunity!:bigsmyl2:

[GREENCOUNTYPETE]

I used to use an AS400 back in 97 , it was still running on thin net , if one coax cable got cut . damaged unhooked ect.. the hole network was down , it is amazing it was up as much as it was. It was on a ibm token ring over thin net

strange thing is i just had a call from a place last month still using thin net from one server , it just happened to be one very important old server , they had brought in a tech who didn't even know what thin net was , he had hooked up a B&C to F converter and hooked it up to a cable modem trying to use that as a router to this old server , they called asking for the IP address of that server , one of my old old ones , he was baffled when i explained it didn't have ip that it used an old Net bios protocol , it was an old broadcast protocol that didn't use Ip , they had to find an almost as old network card to install in it so it could get back on the network.

great fun it was

[Frank46]

I was very familiar with both the fuel oil pumps and chemical pumps. When you pump from the house tanks direct to the generating station boilers, having spare pumps and motors can be the difference between keeping a unit online or tripping off line due lack of fuel oil. Believe me when I say that will get everyone's attention from the plant manager on down. And we are talking about lost $$$ in the power generation business.
After I got transfered due to down sizing, the operators failed to check the lube oil system and fried all the bearings in a $25,000 300hp motor. When the motor was replaced no one checked the lube oil system which had become clogged with the melted bearing material. Result, another $25,000 motor with fried bearings. sufficed to say when the next motor was installed they flushed out both the lube oil system and disassembled the cuno filter to clean out all the junk. Lesson to be learned, always clean out the cuno filter after every motor change. Cheap insurance. Frank

[wv109323]

I would become friends with my current lubricant supplier or shop around for a new one. There have been great leaps and bounds made in greases and lubricants over the last 10-12 years. This mostly due to truely synthetic oils and additives.
I would buy the best lube I could afford and then some. Use an oil sampling program combined with frequent oil changes.
When new equipment is bought include a training school for your operators and maintenance people to learn the how's and why's of the equipment.
Hire a maintenance clerk that does nothing but records when parts are changed, How long the last one lasted, What the mode of failure was, downtime of a each piece of equipment. Establish a preventative program based on time frames. If Gearbox A is supposed to have the oil changed out every 30 days (use the 20 of the month as an example)on the 20 of the month the computer spits out a work schedule that the mechanic is scheduled to change the oil.

[jwhite]

An annual thermal imaging and vibration survey is a great preventive measure, we do one every year aboard the ship i work on and we always find things that require attention that would have been overlooked other wise.

[Blacksmith]

Take a look at lighting. If they haven't already gone to energy efficient types you can show some suginificant money savings which will look good come review time.

Also look at how maintence is preformed. You want most of it to be preventative in nature but many plants work on "Maintenance by exception" they don't do maintenance until something breaks. Some large facilities saved money by instead of changing light bulbs when they burned out; changing all the bulbs in an area on a schedule based on life expectency. They had fewer maintence calls and were more efficient because all the equipment was only set up once, it was also less disruption because it could be scheduled. It was cheaper to throw away light bulbs about to burn out than have multiple crews changing bulbs all over the plant.

[DRNurse1]

One thing not mentioned in this discussion is Root Cause Analysis. This is a way of identifying why some thing failed and can reduce unnecessary stock waiting for the what ifs. The problems are some folks use this technique in a punitive way and you need time after something fails to evaluate the situation. We use it in my profession and it works pretty well as long as the bosses do not make it punitive. Just my $.02.

[Jeffrey]

Regarding spare motors or anything with a shaft or bearings, those bearings MUST be 'exercised' periodically. A shaft sitting in a bearing will wear at its lowermost contact point.
I worked for an A/C distributer that would send a person into the warehouse with a list of model numbers and a strapwrench. A compressor's model number would be located with the number of times it needed to be rotated and in which direction.
A motor rebuild shop worker told me of a plant that 'could not go down'. To prevent downtime, every motor had its spare next to it on the deck. Eventually a motor failed. Its twin was installed. The next day the new motor failed: bad bearings. Another motor of the same type was located in another part of the plant. It was installed and failed the day after installation. A motor that had never seen service was pulled and inspected. Its bearing had worn at the 6 oclock position.
Point is, going to store a motor?, rotate it once a month or so.