Today’s Gremlin – “follow me blindly”, is one of the big reasons your equipment isn’t reliable. Manufacturers tell you what maintenance to perform and how to do it, then insist you follow their guidance by voiding warranties if you don’t. Those recommendations are full of inspections and replacements if you find any flaw – even normal wear and tear! They ask you to overhaul equipment, replacing all sorts of parts that you must buy from them. If you are in the parts business, as your manufacturers are, you can make a real killing! So, if I’m a manufacturer of industrial equipment, you must follow me blindly.
Upwards of 89% of all failures occur randomly. 68% show up far earlier than they should – infant mortality.
Infant mortality
If you are reading this, you are probably human, but maybe AI. Regardless, we both make mistakes – lots of them in fact. A lot of mistakes happen when we take things apart, replace parts and put them back together. The parts may even be the wrong parts, or sub-standard, especially if your purchasers are looking for deals. Mistakes and poor quality are the leading cause of infant mortality. When your operators restart the equipment you just tore apart and rebuilt, there’s also a chance they will make mistakes. Again, those mistake will show up early – either at start up, or shortly afterwards.
89% Random – so what?
Preventive maintenance is carried out by replacing parts before they break. It works well if the parts actually breakdown or fail at an age when you can be confident that replacement will avoid failure. Go out and roll a dice. How likely is it that you’ll get a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or a 6? They all have a 1 in 6 chance of showing up. That’s because they show up randomly and their are only 6 possibilities. Most failures occur at random intervals, not at fixed and predicable times. In fact close to 90% are random. That means that if you replace a part, there’s a 1/10 chance that you’ll actually improve the life of the equipment. We could also say that there’s a 9/10 chance, you won’t. In fact, it could fail right after you replace it (like those old style incandescent light bulbs used to do).
If most of your maintenance consists of part replacements and overhauls, or inspections followed by replacements whenever any flaw is spotted, you are doing fixed interval replacements. Those are preventive and they don’t work for randomly timed failures. Manufacturer recommendations are full of those too. Why?
It sells parts
The more parts you replace, the more you buy. If you want your warranty to remain “valid”, then you buy them from me – “follow me blindly”.
Go ahead and void your warranty
If you buy your parts anywhere else, except from “follow me blindly”, you’ll void your warranty. Never mind that your warranty expires soon, that thinking about warranty can last for years – well beyond it’s expiry.
I don’t know how you operate my equipment
Today’s Gremlin – “Follow me blindly” has his own best interests at heart. He has no idea how you run or maintain your equipment. He has no idea how it breaks in your operating circumstances, nor how it really matters to your business. The only way you can take that into account, is to develop your own maintenance programs and ignore what the manufacturer says. Some of what they say about lubricants, and filters, is probably valid, but aside from that, most manufacturer recommendations are unintentionally misleading.
That’s right, unintentionally. They don’t even know they are doing it, and it’s actually to their advantage to stay in the dark. Think about it.
If you have been following the manufacturer recommendations yet remain disappointed with asset performance, there’s an opportunity, probably worth a lot of money, if you talk to us.
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