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    1. Equipment
    2. Fleet Maintenance
    3. Oils, Lubricants & Greases

    Understanding Maintenance Philosophy

    How reliability-centered maintenance, seasonal product strategy and oil analysis play into the success of your operations.

    Feb 4, 2025
    Lucas Oil Products
    Dsc00447
    Lucas Oil Products

    As the seasons turn, we are often reminded of several routine maintenance activities which accompany the changing weather patterns. Around the house these include things like rolling back the clocks for daylight saving time, cleaning gutters and laundry vents, and changing batteries in smoke detectors. On the jobsite, a similar cadence of routine maintenance is also triggered for heavy equipment maintenance managers preparing for the upcoming season. Heavy equipment assets are the backbone of many construction and mining companies, and unplanned downtime can have a drastic impact on a business’ bottom line. Seasonal turnover is a great time to evaluate your company’s maintenance philosophy and consider if there is a need to refocus on reliability-centered maintenance, also known as proactive maintenance.

    Unlike reactive maintenance (responding to issues as they arise) or preventative maintenance (preempting issues by frequent scheduled maintenance and downtime), proactive maintenance is based on the principle that a piece of equipment or component should never have the same failure mode twice. It combines elements of each reactive, preventative and predictive maintenance (collecting operational data and modeling or predicting the needed time for maintenance based on operating and equipment condition) to maximize equipment reliability and uptime. When properly applied, proactive maintenance focuses on identifying root causes of equipment downtime and putting procedures and maintenance schedules in place to minimize it.

    Often, maintenance strategies vary within a given fleet, and may even be asset specific; however, a robust proactive maintenance program typically includes less than 10% reactive maintenance, 25% to 35% preventative maintenance, and 45% to 55% predictive maintenance.

    As with most heavy equipment assets, lubricants or other operating fluid selections and application are important maintenance items that can have a significant impact to equipment reliability and uptime. Unfortunately, proper lubricant selection and application are not always well understood or comprehended as a critical element of proactive maintenance strategies. This is further compounded by the complexities of managing an equipment fleet which can operate at seasonal extremes.

    Seasonal Proactive Maintenance Planning

    All seasonal proactive maintenance should begin with establishing the state of the fleet and critical equipment or maintenance issues, which would prevent a successful season of operation. Critical items should be addressed quickly to allow the focus on the preventative and predictive dimensions of a proactive maintenance strategy. Ideally, a robust proactive maintenance plan includes planned downtime for all assets which require seasonal fluid and filter changes.

    With reactive maintenance complete, a robust seasonal proactive maintenance strategy requires that all lubricants and greases in the equipment, including engine oil, transmission fluids, hydraulic fluids, gear oils, should be evaluated for suitability for the seasonal operating conditions. While it is always best practice to follow the recommendations of your equipment manufacturer, consideration of the suitability of a fluid’s viscosity classification can help avoid unplanned downtime, slow startups, or premature wear and tear on equipment.

    For example, in cold environments lubricants will increase in viscosity or thicken when equipment is left idle for prolonged periods of time. This could lead to start up issues such asoil starvation.

    Additionally, the fluid may take longer to reach operating temperatures or may not achieve the same operating temperature typically seen in warmer months. This could lead to a higher-than-expected viscosity, which will affect the fluid’s energy efficiency or even its ability to flow to critical lubrication points. If the viscosity is too high and oil starvation occurs, undue wear and tear can take your equipment out of service for good.

    In the case of motor oils used during winter months, if your heavy equipment typically recommends a 15W-40 diesel motor oil, a maintenance manager may consider the suitability of 10W-30 or 5W-40 viscosity grade to their application. The latter have improved low temperature viscosity performance that will aid in preventing start up issues, while providing the same level of protection.

    In the case of hydraulic fluids, if your heavy equipment typically uses an ISO 46 hydraulic fluid, consider if an ISO 32 or a multi-viscosity hydraulic fluid with a high viscosity Index would be better suited for the winter. In many cases the same viscosity at operating temperature can be achieved provided the fleet is monitoring the fluid during operation and adjusting for any observed changes.

    Conventional vs. Synthetic Fluids

    There are stalwarts on both sides of the conventional versus synthetic debate, and both have their experience to back them up. Modern lubrication programs have room for both. It’s true that typically conventional lubricants are often less expensive than their synthetic cousins, and in many cases can deliver comparable performance in several performance categories. However, many major original equipment manufacturers either recommend or require synthetic oils and other fluids to be used in modern heavy equipment for warranty coverage, and to achieve the rated energy efficiency and oil drain potential offered by the equipment.

    Often synthetic oils are capable of extended oil drain intervals. This is because of their higher natural oxidative stability relative to conventional oils. They can be less prone to oxidative breakdown and capable of longer, more severe operating conditions. This often leads to better resistance to developing sludge and deposits.

    Synthetic oils also have better viscosity-temperature behavior and maintain a more consistent viscosity over a wider temperature range. This is described by a property called the viscosity index (VI), where a higher number indicates a slower rate of viscosity change as the temperature changes. For winter application, higher VI oils will not thicken as quickly as the temperature gets colder, allowing them to better maintain operating viscosity than conventional oils. Synthetics also tend to have more waxes removed or refined out of them which improves properties like pour point and low temperature flow.

    Oil Analysis Supports Proactive Maintenance

    Proactive maintenance helps enable maximum value creation from your assets, which includes maximizing production, but also minimizing operating costs. Lubricant analysis can offer tremendous insights into equipment condition as well as fluid service life. Lubricants are expensive components of a mechanical system, and often oil drains are conservative because they are inexpensive relative to replacement of the mechanical component. By sampling in-service fluids and analyzing them for properties such as viscosity, wear metals, contamination and oxidative life, an optimized fluid service interval can be implemented, and better insights can be fed into predictive maintenance models to further improve proactive maintenance strategies on your assets.

    Many lubricant providers and third-party laboratories offer lubricant and grease analysis as a service for fleets. If your company is not engaged in fluid condition monitoring and predictive maintenance, you could be leaving a lot of value on the table.

    In closing, it is important to remember that no equipment is 100% reliable 100% of the time. Unplanned downtime will always be lurking, waiting for unexpected circumstances to cause an equipment failure or issue. While maintenance managers have a lot to consider when developing and refining their seasonal maintenance programs, shifting to a reliability-centered maintenance philosophy can position a company to get the most out of their valuable investments.

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