Lube management software saves metal manufacturer $209,070

Overview

After a $25 million expansion, a U.S. primary metals manufacturer needed its lubrication programme to keep pace with rapid growth. Digitising lube routes prevented 66 failures and returned $209,070 in the first year.

The challenge

Following a $25 million expansion and a period of rapid growth, the plant needed to strengthen a lubrication programme that had been built for a smaller operation. Management set two targets: minimise unplanned downtime, and bring maintenance expenditure back under control. With more assets on the floor and the same paper-based routines, lubrication tasks were easy to miss and impossible to audit, and a missed lube point on a critical pump surfaced only once it had already failed.

The solution

On the recommendation of their oil distributor, the manufacturer implemented the Redlist lubrication management application. Lubrication tasks were charted and organised into routes, so every point had a defined product, volume and interval. Technicians gained the ability to report concerns in real time from the floor rather than at the end of a shift, which shortened the path from observation to scheduled work. Scheduling and repair procedures were compressed accordingly, and each completed route left an auditable record behind it.

Results

The programme paid for itself inside the first year. Sixty-six potential equipment failures were identified and prevented before they reached breakdown, and non-catastrophic failure events fell by 97%. Avoided downtime accounted for $165,000, equipment and pump replacement savings a further $24,750, and faster repair turnaround removed $19,320 of regulatory fine exposure, for $209,070 in total.