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Lubricant efficiency: education leads to greater OEE

26 February 2021

Andy Howard looks at how sustained efficiency in a maintenance regime needs to extend beyond lubricant selection. 

Food manufacturing machinery faces many unique challenges when it comes to maintaining peak performance. From facing regular washdowns to heavy loads; operating at extreme temperatures or at high speeds, a strict preventative maintenance regime is needed to make sure stringent hygiene and food safety regulations are adhered to and to ensure that equipment operates optimally and downtimes are minimised to deliver the required outputs – products leaving the factory must be unspoiled and free from potentially harmful contaminants.  

There is no question that balancing price and performance is a key element of lubricant selection. Making sure that the best performing grease is chosen for each machine component requires engineers to find a balance between price and performance.  

Keeping up with the ever-increasing number of lubricants on the market and selecting the ones most suitable for the specific requirements can be a challenge in itself. But that is only one part of the equation. Once the right lubricant is found it is then necessary to ensure it is consistently being used efficiently across the entire site?

Team-wide know how
Making sure that the entire maintenance team is trained on lubricant use and management at every level can have a big impact on overall efficiency. 

From lubricant users through engineering improvement and planning teams, investing time in bespoke training that is tailored to individual job roles will ensure everyone in the maintenance team has the information they need to perform the tasks required of them.

A comprehensive application-based training should take you through a typical factory layout, ensuring that the most effective lubricants are used in the right quantities to keep all machinery fully operational through to its next maintenance cycle. It should also consider the specific equipment and operating conditions in use across the site and industry segment; and cover the products that have the necessary NSF registration for the industry, equipment and operating conditions.

The right knowledge can have a huge impact on Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE), helping reduce unplanned downtime, quality and performance losses. 

Know the risks
One of the most common areas of confusion we see within maintenance teams relates to the food safety requirements of industrial lubricants. This lack of clarity can affect the risk management of the lubricants used in food manufacturing areas. 

Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) plans should identify the hazards associated with lubricant usage within these areas. However, if there is nobody in the team with in-depth lubricant knowledge, the HACCP plan may not be sufficiently detailed and potential risks can be missed or insufficiently controlled. 

Making sure that the relevant members of the HACCP team are trained in this area will ensure that all risks associated with lubricants used in a food manufacturing environment are identified and effectively controlled. 

The Covid-19 pandemic has forced businesses to assess the way in which they operate, and many are turning to technology to help achieve operational efficiencies. This includes training. Some lubricant suppliers have been quick to make the switch to online training and support to help make sure maintenance teams have access to the information they need to get the most out of the products being using on site. 

As well as the obvious safety benefits of accessing training online, remote learning brings efficiencies in itself: delivering information in concise chunks that takes up less of the day than an intensive training session, as well as saving travel time and expenses. 

ROCOL has offered online digital lubrication training for customers for several years so understands how it fits the needs of customers today. Onsite training has been massively reduced throughout 2020 and into 2021, so we have taken the time to improve and expand our online training offering.

So, expanding your thinking beyond product selection for your maintenance regime into training and wider policy management can ultimately result in an increased OEE score. 

Andy Howard is food segment sector specialist at ROCOL.


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