by Drew D. Troyer

Joe, our lubrication technician, resigned from his position today. Now what do we do?

If we are typical, we will say “so what” because we assume that anyone can lubricate machines. We will then select a general hand to replace Joe, show him where the lube room is and tell him to get to work — without any education or training and little direction.

If we are typical, lubrication routes and schedules are sketchy at best, and work plans and procedures are non-existent.

If we are typical, we will begin to experience a rash of machine failures, but these will just blend in with the noise because 92 percent of our work is unplanned and reactive.

Moreover, if we are typical, we will never discover that poor lubrication — more precisely, Joe’s resignation — is the reason why the failures are occurring because we lack a root cause analysis program.

In the event that we do put two and two together and discover that the rash of failures that began four to six months after Joe’s resignation is related to lubrication, we will probably blame Joe’s replacement and terminate or reassign him, when in fact the lack of a good lubrication program is actually to blame.

In other words, we failed to manage the lubrication program. Does this sound harsh?

Set up for failure
Let’s look at how we got to this point.

Joe had been responsible for lubricating all the machines in “Area B” for more than 10 years. Operators occasionally topped off systems where required if Joe wasn’t available, but they lacked training and often used the wrong lubricant or contaminated the machine in the process. Really, lubrication of Area B came down to Joe.

Joe had been on the job for a total of 12 years. He joined the company as a general hand, a capacity in which he served for two years. When the previous lubrication technician retired, Joe was offered the job and accepted. Initially, Joe earned 60 percent of what an “A Mechanic” earns, but over time his pay increased to 75 percent of an A Mechanic’s wage.

Joe learned the ropes from his predecessor, but he received no formal training or education on lubrication. He had the routes memorized and completed them according to what he knew, but he didn’t have the skill or motivation to look for opportunities to improve plant lubrication by modifying methods, intervals or by deploying new ideas and/or technology.

It’s bad enough that our lubrication program has been stuck in a time warp, but with Joe’s departure, we can’t even maintain our generally poor practices because we lack clearly defined routes, procedures and work plans that would enable another technician to pick up the ball and carry it.

Turn negative into a positive
Let’s not follow the predictable pattern of assigning lubrication to whoever is available and setting him or her up for failure. Take the opportunity to create a lubrication program that is well-designed, properly documented with procedures and routes, effectively implemented into our work planning and scheduling system, and manned by a skilled and motivated lubrication technician who can both do the job and drive improvement in lubrication practice.

No, rather than following a predictable and often repeated pattern of failure, let’s turn Joe’s resignation into an opportunity to improve plant lubrication. This will, in turn, drive down maintenance costs while driving up equipment reliability.

Better yet, why should we wait for Joe to quit before we improve plant lubrication? We are smart managers — Joe doesn’t have to quit before we recognize that effective machinery lubrication is a cornerstone of mechanical reliability.

Let’s be proactive and start to clean up our act now!

Drew Troyer is the senior editor of Machinery Lubrication Magazine. If you have a lubrication or oil analysis question, contact Coach Troyer at or e-mail . 

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