Greasing is an essential but often ignored or neglected task in any operating facility. Case studies confirm that even though plants spend less than 0.5% of the plants maintenance budget on lubricants, the downstream impact of poor lubrication can impact as much as 30% of a plant's total maintenance cost each year. Over 70% of the causes that result in machine failure are due to surface degradation where poor lubrication is the root cause. (source; ExxonMobil Case Study).
The challenge is that greasing slowing leads to Mechanical Wear over time. And when its not being performed, or being done incorrectly, there is no immediate catastrophic event. It slowly starts to impact machine up-time at various rates, leading a plant into a reactive maintenance mode, instead of a proactive, planned state.
Zimmark takes a best practices approach that uses defined procedures and frequencies to define control plans for all grease points within a facility. We then establish an operating plan that focuses the resources necessary to effectively grease each application at those defined frequency points. We use compliance data based on activities performed to adjust our control plans to ensure that all grease points are being addressed over time.