Measuring the Success of an Oil Analysis Program

In a world where budgets rule the day and any additional program is shut down if merit cannot be found in it, being able to prove the success of your oil analysis program is critical. But how does one go about proving that the implementation of a program has stopped or reduced failures when there isn’t a big incident to compare it against? Simple, we start in the past to get to where we need to be in the future.

Documentation is always critical especially when we’re trying to build a case to implement some new measures. If previous failures have been documented, then the associated downtime and expenses such as additional labour, parts or expedited shipping and handling should also be taken account of. By detailing the costs associated with a failure or unplanned downtime from a lubrication issue, we can use this data to help determine the ROI of implementing the oil analysis program.

We need to then identify the times that the oil analysis program alerted the maintenance team about an upcoming issue or something that didn’t seem right which turned out to be a failing part or perhaps something that would cause some unplanned downtime. In these cases, we need to note what challenge we stopped or reduced the risk of occurring. By assigning a value to the failure that we prevented, we can then develop the ROI on the implementation of the oil analysis program.

Oil analysis can be a game changer for our maintenance teams in our fleets. It can help them to make more informed decisions allowing them to plan maintenance activities better and even reduce unwanted downtime. Oil analysis can be that hidden tool in our utility belt if we make use of it and implement it to help our fleets.

 

References

Bureau Veritas. (2020). The Basics of Oil Analysis Booklet. Retrieved from Bureau Veritas: https://oil-testing.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Basics-of-Oil-Analysis-Booklet-2020V_compressed-1.pdf

Rensselar, J. V. (2016, January). Unraveling the mystery of oil analysis flagging limits. STLE TLT magazine.