CHAD CHICHESTER and DAN WARREN
condition monitoring specialists, Dow Corning

As the old Frank Sinatra song goes, “You can’t have one without the other.”

Maybe that explains why a manager at Dow Corning’s plant in Midland, Mich., jammed Chad Chichester and Dan Warren onto the same All-Pro entry form.

Looking at their resume, it is impossible to separate the two.  So, this dynamic duo shares one spot on our team.

In October 1999, Chichester and Warren set out to document the financial benefits of their predictive maintenance activities (vibration analysis, infrared thermography, etc.).

You want to get management’s attention?  How about MRO Today’s attention?  Document more than $2.7 million of cost avoidances.

Included in Chichester and Warren’s figure were:

* Maintenance dollars Dow Corning spent replacing “wear parts” (primarily bearings) compared to dollars it would have spent replacing equipment allowed to fail (the traditional method).

* The labor costs for replacing parts and equipment as opposed to repairing them upon failure.

* The subsequent production losses resulting from unscheduled downtime.

Their work sold upper management on the savings potential of predictive maintenance.  Also, by identifying improper equipment installation (misalignment, soft foot and other maladies) and proper equipment selection and operation practices (best efficiency points, flow conditions and power consumption), they contributed to the plant’s overall equipment reliability.

In this case, two heads are better than one.

This article appeared in the December 2000/January 2001 issue of MRO Today magazine.

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