Processors Turn to Lubricants to Carry Them to Peak Efficiency

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Camper looks at the food & beverage industry’s maintenance teams and gives them an “above average” grade overall when it comes to implementing and following a lubrication program properly throughout the plant.

“There’s a hyper-awareness about the equipment that really stems from a need for cleanliness,” he says. “If you’re paying a lot of attention to your machinery that deeply, that’s going to usually translate over to the lubrication program.”

However, there are always opportunities to improve, he says, starting with the basic blocking and tackling of identifying and using the right lubrication with the right equipment.

“Right product, right place; that’s critical,” Camper says. Technicians cannot fall into the trap of substituting an oil or grease that is similar to one that may have run out of stock, as that might lead to the next technician simply replacing that product, leading to early failure of components or the entire piece of equipment.

Camper also suggests that maintenance teams dig deeper and identify the equipment that, should it fail, would hamstrung the entire operation — and then really dive into ways to reduce failure risk.

“It then comes down to ‘Are we using the most optimal lubricant on the market to maximize uptime for this equipment?’ ” he says. “Then, they also should have an oil analysis for this piece of equipment, on a quarterly basis at a minimum, just to make sure that everything looks good.”

Lubricant analyses have improved over the years, Girard says, especially with the rise in data capture, storage and power.

“Lubricant analyses can be tracked today, where you send your oil samples to the lubricant lab, you get a report, but now it’s logged into the system, and the next time they send another sample from the same machine, you can start to see trends,” he says.

Another change has been training, where interactive and virtual lessons have grown more common, especially for distributors, salespeople and customers. Lubriplate offers its own training course, called Lubriplate University, which has grown from originally targeting sales staff and distributors to actual users of Lubriplate’s products. Suffice to say, it has helped both to develop that relationship.

“Through training, the maintenance staff can begin to understand things like ISO viscosity and how that relates to their gearboxes, or flash point and how does that relate to the hydraulic systems.” Girard explains. “You can accomplish this [and more] through training, and you also can get them to trust you through training, which is extremely important.”

Without that trust, operators very well could sit on products they’ve always used, when new technologies are driving improvements in lubricants themselves, Camper explains. Food & beverage processors need to be on the lookout for better opportunities that aren’t far over the horizon.

“There are a lot of novel base oils that are coming out, either synthetic or bio-based, that have shown some really impressive lubrication characteristics, which have implications for energy efficiency and waste reduction,” he says. “Those are winding their way through the industrial side, and if they demonstrate some efficiency improvements, that should translate really well to the food manufacturing industry.”

Current innovation notwithstanding, Girard adds that processors need to know the reality that today’s food-grade lubricants have come a long way, offering a much better lifespan than their ancestors.

“As industry has evolved with additive technology and synthetic fluids — the polyalphaolefins and polyalkylene glycols for example — now food-grade lubricants frequently last longer than general industrial lubricants,” he says. “The old thinking that food-grade lubricants don’t last as long is quickly dying out.”

That is good news for processors looking to improve their operational efficiency, the workload of their maintenance teams, their risk profile and their impact on the environment all at once.