Check 1: Life Cycle Costs

Specify, design and purchase assets based on life cycle cost (LCC), not just equipment acquisition cost. LCC means taking into account the total cost of buying and owning the asset, not just the purchase price.

In the early stages of a new installation project, operations, maintenance and engineering departments must work closely together to establish good LCC processes. Typical good results are equipment designs that are easy to maintain and reliable, and equipment whose condition is easy to monitor.

For example, in a plant with a well-established LCC process, in order to avoid turbulence and cavitation, the length of the straight pipe section at the inlet of a  split case water pump  is best 10 times the diameter of the pump inlet.

The tank inlets will be equipped with hinges for quick and safe installation, rather than traditional tank inlet valves that require a lifting gear and two people to open. The design will also feature as few bolts as possible to reduce wrench time.

Other examples include installing thin oil sampling ports on all relevant oil storage tanks. The operating range is marked on the meter for quick checking of current readings. Install jack bolts (push bolts) on the motor and gearbox for accurate alignment (centering).

There are hundreds of examples in most plants where engineers clearly did not work closely with maintenance and operations. The root of the problem often lies in management's approval of engineers completing projects on time and within budget. Therefore, engineers have no incentive to consider LCC.

Check 2: Alignment

Most factories have the basic requirements for good alignment. They have the tools and the training. The question is, can we think that the alignment work is done well just because we have these basic conditions?

Many of the factories we visited had the problem of not having time to do the alignment properly, and/or not having the correct design, and/or not maintaining the bases and foundations to achieve good alignment. In some cases, standards were not adhered to (such as thermal expansion checks and avoidance of pipe strains, etc.).

Walk around the factory and estimate alignment by checking for: poor foundations, equipment without jacked bolts, signs of sledge hammering on the motor, shim sets larger than four, and hot bearings. All of these can be signs of poor alignment.

Serviceability design: The tank entrance on the left has many bolts and no hinges. Wrench time can be significantly reduced by adding a hinge to the design and reducing the number of bolts.

Understand the pressures you face when building a reliable factory. They also provide reliability and maintenance consulting and training to ensure your equipment is running properly.

If you ask any maintenance department how best to prevent failures, the first answer is usually that operations need to stop destroying equipment. If you ask operations how they can improve the reliability of a  split case water pump, the top answer is almost always to get maintenance people working instead of doing nothing.

Check 3: Motor Starts

When the start button of an AC motor is pressed, the current flowing through the motor is typically four to seven times the 100% load. If you press the start button multiple times in a short period of time, it is easy to damage or burn the motor windings. Are your operators aware of this fact and operating the equipment accordingly?

Check 4: Steam System

A simple operating procedure, such as opening a valve too quickly, can have devastating consequences for a piping system. This phenomenon is called water hammer. In this case, steam enters the cold piping system and condenses into water. Water flows extremely quickly and can cause damage to pipes and flanges as it passes through the system. Pipe elbows are particularly susceptible to damage. This is a common problem in many industries.