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| Home About OWL What We Do Our Clients Case Studies News Seminars Contact |
| The South African economy needs to grow. This is not a secret. We
also need to compete on the international market. But, are we all
doing what we can to ensure that we are contributing towards this
economic growth. We have a responsibility to the consumer to keep the
manufacturing costs of our products down (as low as possible). One of the contributing factors towards controlling manufacturing costs is the ability of Engineers and their Maintenance staff to carry out reliable and correct equipment maintenance and repair of the machinery they are responsible for. This entails the following of prescribed equipment maintenance procedures and the use of the best materials and services available, such as parts, lubricants and specialist technical lubrication knowledge. However, this will not and does not happen if the Engineering Department Management, including the Company Engineer, does not make themselves available to be communicated with, be it by telephone, email or personal visits. There are some Company/Plant Engineers who will not take telephone calls, will not return calls, will not respond to emails and will not make appointments to see senior representatives of companies which can assist them. There are many expert and competent people who would appreciate the opportunity to assist engineering departments to improve there maintenance levels but they are not given the opportunity to do so because they cannot get to talk to the ‘man in charge’. He sits in his ivory tower office and avoids anyone and anything that might show up a gap in his knowledge. Why, he cannot be an expert in all matters all of the time? Surely he would appreciate expert assistance and advice from a specialist technical consultant. This approach often results in incorrect products being purchased from the wrong supplier. Can you imagine buying speciality grease or any lubricant from a bolt and nut supplier? Lubrication Surveys conducted up to 20 years ago are still being followed even though many of the lubricants specified have become obsolete, replaced, renamed, etc or the machinery referred to has been replaced with newer or completely different machines. What good is an out of date Lube Survey? This often happens because of the ‘hide and seek’ game that some engineering management play with product suppliers who wish to offer up to date and specialised technical advice, often for free. The manufacturing company then ends up with problems such as regular bearing failures and other machinery related problems because of the wrong choice of lubricant, be it oil or grease. The information available through a tool such as vibration analysis is often completely wasted because the report is ignored and not utilised or no one can interpret it. When the report is used as a guide, incorrect products are often used, with the resulting lack of improvement to a situation. Planned or Preventative Maintenance procedures seem to have disappeared from many companies, being considered too expensive and not really necessary from a maintenance perspective. In the final cost of manufacturing a product, the maintenance of the production equipment if done regularly and correctly using the specified parts and lubricants, is a very small part of the overall product price. However, if maintenance is not done regularly and correctly, this quickly drives up the product manufacturing costs. Unplanned equipment down time adds not only the repair cost, but also the production time lost. The production time lost is far greater than the repair cost as it affects up and down stream associated equipment and processes. These costs eventually are passed on to the consumer, you and me. SOS Oil supplies specialist services to the Engineering Department. We Consult, carry out Lube Surveys, present Lubrication Seminars (through Oil Wise Lubrication, the Consulting and Seminars Division of SOS Oil) and supply all lubricants. In other words, a one stop shop for your machinery lubrication needs and knowledge. We will be running our popular Oil Wise Lubrication seminars again in 2009 and are now taking bookings. We will publish the seminar dates in due course. The cost of the seminar remains as it was for 2008, (R1475.00 + VAT per delegate) but we will be using different venues. Details can be found on our website www.oilwiselubrication.co.za. |
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