$2.4 million is a considerable fine. But one wonders if a fine 3 years after an accident will really help improve safety.
The 2007 accident was a result of poor maintenance and repair activities, says a report by the Pipelines and Hazardous materials Safety Administration. The report took a year to complete and was reported on in part of an article in the Kalamazoo Gazette.
The article said:
“In addition to the $2,405,000 fine, Enbridge must also revise and implement certain pipeline maintenance and repair procedures, as well as train and re-qualify its employees.”
The fine comes after a accident in Michigan that happened on July 26 that resulted in more than 1 million gallons of oil spilling into the Kalamazoo River. Enbridge has released estimates of the cost of the cleanup of that spill: $300 to $400 million. Some of those costs will be covered by insurance. After insurance, Enbridge expects the costs to be $35-45 million.
. . . . . .
Wow! The fine is a pittance compared to the accident costs of the recent spill. It seems as if a great deal of money could be saved by implementing proactive maintenance programs to improve pipeline/equipment reliability. Perhaps Enbridge should be looking into using Equifactor® and attend the Heinz Bloch session at the TapRooT® Summit to learn the latest ideas for equipment reliability improvement.
Sometimes we take equipment reliability for granted. But equipment failures can cause serious accident.
In this case, no one was hurt when the boiler exploded. But considerable damage was done to the hotel. The root cause analysis of the failure will be interesting.
How do you ensure your equipment is reliable?
How do you troubleshoot equipment problems?
Do you find the root causes of your equipment problems and fix them to prevent future accidents?
..”About one-fourth of the problems were things like infections and eye abrasions in contact lens wearers. These are sometimes preventable and can result from wearing contact lenses too long without cleaning them.”
..”Other common problems found by researchers at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration include puncture wounds from hypodermic needles breaking off in the skin while injecting medicine or illegal drugs; infections in young children with ear tubes; and skin tears from pelvic devices used during gynecological exams in teen girls.”
..”The most serious problems involved implanted devices such as brain shunts for kids with hydrocephalus (water on the brain); chest catheters for cancer patients receiving chemotherapy at home; and insulin pumps for diabetics. Infections and overdoses are among problems associated with these devices. Only 6 percent of patients overall had to be hospitalized.”
…”Malfunction and misuse are among possible reasons”
I read the article and then asked “AND”? There is so much more information that needs to be collected and compared.
… “is there damage with this equipment for children and adults?”
… “is there a difference between different manufacturers for the same types of equipment?”
…”what allowed 70,000 incidents to occur without having the root causes listed already?” …. yes I know there are patient and company privacy issues but that is not a good excuse!
The New York Times wrote an article titled “Workers on Doomed Rig Voiced Concern About Safety” that questioned the maintenance practices of Transocean aboard the Deepwater Horizon. Quotes from the article include:
“Some workers also voiced concerns about poor equipment reliability, ‘which they believed was as a result of drilling priorities taking precedence over planned maintenance,’ according to the survey.”
“’I’m petrified of dropping anything from heights not because I’m afraid of hurting anyone (the area is barriered off), but because I’m afraid of getting fired,’ one worker wrote.”
““The company is always using fear tactics,” another worker said. ‘All these games and your mind gets tired.‘”
“The two Transocean-commissioned reports obtained by The Times echo the findings of a maintenance audit conducted by BP in September 2009. But the Transocean-commissioned reports indicate that maintenance concerns existed just days before the explosion and the rig owner was aware of them. The 2009 BP audit found that Transocean had left 390 maintenance jobs undone, requiring more than 3,500 hours of work. The BP audit also referred to the amount of deferred work as ‘excessive.‘”
“The FAA safety order affects 138 planes registered in the United States out of a global fleet of 314 planes. Aviation officials in other countries usually follow the FAA’s lead on safety of U.S.-manufactured planes.”
“The order only applies to 767s that have the original pylon design. Boeing changed the design after the problem first became known…. FAA issued a safety order for these planes in 2005 requiring inspections for cracks every 1,500 flights. The new order accelerates that schedule to every 400 flights or every 90 days, whichever is later.”
read more here:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100721/ap_on_bi_ge/us_boeing_safety_order
The Associated Press reported that an explosion of a coke oven at a plant in Pittsburg injured 20 people, at least six critically. The explosion happened during maintenance on the B “battery” (bank) of the ovens.
The newly developed SFDA (Saudi Food and Drug Authority) located in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, has taken the lead in medical oversight of conformity; not only by creating a Medical Devices Sector, but also by ensuring that their Medical Device team has a thorough understanding of human error and equipment failure and has the best tool to investigate it with, TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis.
Here are few pictures taken during the onsite 2-Day TapRooT® Incident Investigation and Root Cause Analysis, 1-Day TapRooT®/Equifactor® Equipment Troubleshooting & Root Cause Failure Analysis, Stopping Human Error, and 1-Day Evidence Gathering Courses held in June.
If you look closely you can see that they are using the new individual software… (another user test to make sure it is ready to go out to all users)
Little is known (or at least has been released) about the actual failure of the Blowout Preventer on the Deepwater Horizon. However, a technical paper (2003) has surfaced that may be a “smoking gun” if it is found that maintenance was deferred on the BOP to reduce costs of drilling.
Here’s a link to the paper (Earl Shanks, Transocean, presented at the Offshore Technology Conference, 2003):
“Because of the pressure on getting the equipment back to work, root cause analysis of the failure is generally not performed.”
Ah … a failure to perform root cause analysis to save time (and big bucks) during drilling.
Another quote:
“In general, operating reliability (of the BOP) is maintained on rigs mostly through regular maintenance intervals rather than specifying a reliability of a system or a component to minimize maintenance.”
The article also said:
“… this is a very expensive approach, and it is also an opportunity to introduce human error into the system.”
Most of the paper is about ways to improve the design and reliability of Blowout Preventers. But the vultures are circling. And the smoking gun quotes above will mean trouble if it is found that any maintenance was skipped or if the BOP had a poor reliability record.
If maintenance was skipped and/or if the BOP had a poor reliability record, you will hear the cry that BP is once again trading lives (as at the BP Texas City explosion) and the environment (as at the corrosion related oil leaks in their pipeline at Prudhoe Bay). Actually, many don’t need evidence. They will start saying it already!
Two British Trafalgar-Class submarines were at sea for an extended period of time with their steam generator safety valves isolated. One was at sea for over 2 years, the other over 1 year.
For those that unfamiliar with submarine or nuclear systems, these valves are very important in the event another problem occurs. They allow the steam generators to relieve excess pressure overboard in the event of an over-pressure condition. On these 2 submarines, test blanks were left installed after maintenance, blocking the safety valve overboard discharge path.
The report cites “poor discipline” at the shipyard that performed repair work. Do you think maybe we could come up with better root causes?
COMPRESSOR FAILURE AND SUBSEQUENT FIRE ON FACILITY
Country: AUSTRALIA
Location: OFFSHORE : Floating Production Storage & Offloading Unit
A high pressure gas compressor experienced a catastrophic failure during start up on an FPSO (Floating Production Storage and Offload) vessel. This failure caused a hydrocarbon gas release that auto ignited, resulting in a local jet fire at the compressor and a second fire within the gas turbine enclosure. Fortunately no personnel were injured during the incident.
Centrifugal gas compressors are widely utilised on production facilities within Australian waters. They are typically used to compress gas required for export or well re-injection. A typical gas compressor configuration consists of 1st LP (low pressure) stage, 2nd IP (intermediate pressure) stage and 3rd HP (high pressure) stage.
What could go wrong?
High reliance on a single piece of safety critical equipment – for example, an instrument
Inadequate commissioning of the compressor’s control systems
Inadequate protection systems in place to protect compressors from operating outside design limitations
Personnel overwhelmed by ‘Nuisance’ Alarms’ can overlook significant
Personnel not trained for site specific equipment operation
Inadequate management of safety device ‘inhibits’
Inadequate commissioning of fire protections systems
Key Lessons:
Ensure commissioning activities are correctly undertaken and verified by competent persons.
Ensure control room operations personnel have the required competence and training for their specific control system and type of compressor on location.
Ensure control room operators are not overloaded by ‘nuisance’ alarms by ensuring effective alarm management through alarm rationalisation.
Any overrides on safety controls should be controlled and be properly risk assessed.
Repetitive alarms need to be properly investigated and resolved.
Ensure effective management of procedural controls by compliance monitoring.
Wherever possible minimise dependence on operators in safeguarding the compressor.
Develop the compressor’s safe guard system to ensure a fail safe design.
Consider the impact of an instrument failure in machine control or protection systems, particularly if fail-to-danger is undetected.
Who is responsible?
Under provisions of the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Act 2006, operators of facilities have a duty of care to ensure that plant and equipment at the facility are safe and without risk to health. Suppliers of plant have a duty to ensure that plant, when properly used, is safe and without risk to health.
Source Contact:
This alert is being distributed via a partnership between the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (http://www.ogp.org.uk) and NOPSA (http://www.nopsa.gov.au).
For further information email alerts@nopsa.gov.au.
Often one dealing with many industries hears this phase…
“Risk is just part of the job! It’s not going to get done unless someone does it!”
Here a couple of excerpts from recent article in the New York Times comparing two mines 200 miles apart.
“Coal mining carries inherent risks. But the numerous and very public violations and fatalities at Massey-owned mines over the years may leave the impression that all mines are run this way — that all mines leave coal shafts open and fail to exhaust methane properly. They do not. A comparison between Massey’s safety practices and those of other operators in the coal industry shows sharp differences, helping to explain why Massey mines led the list of those warned by federal regulators that they could face greater scrutiny because of their many violations.”
“A unit of the TECO Coal Corporation operates a mine with the all-business name of E3-1. Like Upper Big Branch, it is nonunion. It has fewer employees, produces three-quarters the amount of bituminous coal, uses an arguably riskier method of mining — and, its operators say, emits 25 percent more methane a day.”
“The differences in safety practices between TECO and Massey are often stark. Where TECO workers rigorously inspect the mine for safety problems before every shift, Upper Big Branch has had dozens of violations related to pre-shift examinations, some for failing to conduct them at all, others for not documenting that they had been done. All TECO miners get weeks of safety training, but in September an inspector ordered dozens of Massey miners out of Upper Big Branch because they lacked proper training.”
“Several years ago, TECO fired a mine foreman for failing to rehang a ventilation curtain that had fallen to the mine floor and contributed to a fire. At Upper Big Branch, inspectors more than once found curtains improperly hung or lying on the mine floor, a practice workers said was routine and encouraged because the plastic sheets get in the way of equipment.”
Finally this quote…
“Many of the miners suspected they knew a major source of the gas buildup: a coal shaft, unused for years, that passed down through several old mines before reaching theirs. According to a longtime foreman at the mine, who provided previously undisclosed details of its operation, the shaft was never properly sealed to prevent the methane above from being sucked into Upper Big Branch.
Instead, the foreman said, rags and garbage were used to create a poor man’s sealant, which he said allowed methane to permeate the mine, displacing much-needed oxygen.” (more…)
Took a couple of pictures of two teams working hard on a troubleshooting exercise.
They are using Heinz Bloch’s troubleshooting tables to narrow down the possible causes of a pump failure. The tables often change the root cause analysis from one looking into a mystery of why something failed to the human actions that led to the failure. For more Equifactor® Course info, see:
Ed Skompski (VP hear at SI) had this story sent to him. Perhaps it’s even true…
During a private “fly-in” fishing excursion in the Alaskan wilderness, the chartered pilot and fishermen left a cooler and bait in the plane. And a bear smelled it. This is what he did to the plane…
The pilot used his radio and had another pilot bring him 2 new tires, 3 cases of duct tape, and a supply of sheet plastic. He patched the plane together and FLEW IT HOME!
This looks like they should have been applying Equifactor® before the accident to handle the equipment reliability problems they were having.
Also, see the lessons learned at the end of the “AccidentRussianHydroPlant.pdf” that is linked to above. Do you think they were based on a through root cause analysis?
Wouldn’t it have been nice to see a real TapRooT® Investigation of this accident…
Imagine a good, complete summer SnapCharT®. And root causes identified for each Causal Factor by using the Root Cause Tree®. And corrective actions developed using the Corrective Action Helper® Module and SMARTER.
How much knowledge is lost because we don’t effectively investigate problems?
The Associated Press reported that Chief Electrician’s Mate John G. Conyers suffered a severe electrical shock and was later pronounced dead at Sharp Coronado Hospital.
The AP reported that the Chief was conducting “routine work” when he was killed.
Normally, Chiefs are supervising, not performing, work. And there is nothing “routine” about working with electricity aboard a ship. Complacency (routine) with electricity on a ship is a deadly combination.
One of my early shipboard jobs in the Navy was being the Electrical Division Officer aboard USS Arkansas (a nuclear powered cruiser). One of the first “performance improvement” programs I ever attempted was to re-instill respect for electricity and get 100% compliance with our lock-out/tag-out program to isolate and check dead all sources of voltage during electrical maintenance work.
People who work with any hazard (for example, electricity), tend to become complacent over time. I’m not sure if this happened on the USS Ronald Reagan, but it certainly is a problem that every manager/supervisor who supervises people who work with a hazard has to confront head-on.
Also, supervisors can frequently be tempted to do work and even take shortcuts to get a job done. This takes them out of their roll to supervise a job and make sure it is done safely and puts them into a dangerous situation where no one is looking over their shoulder to make sure the job is done safely. Once again, I have no evidence that this happened aboard the USS Ronald Reagan, but I’ll be interested in what the eventual accident report has to say.
What can we learn from this fatality BEFORE the investigation is even completed?
First, TapRooT® Users would be getting a complete picture of WHAT happened before they started analyzing WHY it happened. As you can see from my background, there are several problems that I would automatically look for. But, TapRooT® requires the investigator to look at the evidence first before starting the root cause analysis. They have to have a good, complete, accurate, detailed SnapCharT® before they identify the accident’s Causal Factors and find each Causal Factor’s root causes.
Second, TapRooT® Users have a systematic root cause analysis technique, called the Root Cause Tree®, that helps them be sure to check for the many different potential root causes of a problem (Causal Factor). The tree helps guide them to areas they may not have thought of to investigate before. It helps the investigator get beyond blame to find real, fixable root causes that, when fixed, can prevent future accidents.
Third, once the root causes are identified, TapRooT® has a module called the Corrective Action Helper® that helps the investigator develop effective corrective actions. This helps the investigator and management develop corrective actions that might be “outside the box” as far as their experience with corrective actions is concerned.
If you are a TapRooT® User, you have already learned these lessons (but it is good to have them reinforced).
If you are NOT a TapRooT® User, get to a TapRooT® Course NOW! Investigating smaller accidents, incidents, and near misses, as well as using the TapRooT® techniques proactively, can help you avoid major accidents and keep your employees safe.
For more TapRooT® information, including success stories from TapRooT® users, see:
The Mercury News reported that Cal-Osha fined the Department of Water Resources $140,000 after an accident caused by failing to replace an energy dispersion ring in a valve (the report said that they didn’t have time to replace the ring because of the upcoming season) and failure to inspect/maintain a steel wall for 40 years.
Does your facility have standards for maintenance and repairs?
What happens when a part related to safety isn’t available?
Who makes the decision what to do?
Has becoming “Lean” created spare parts shortages?
What old equipment needs safety inspections to make sure that wear or corrosion hasn’t made it unsafe?
When equipment failures lead to bad press, management gets interested. At least the management of EUROSTAR, the high speed train service beneath the English Channel, became interested enough to have an “independent” review of the failure of 5 trains on December 18-19.
Unfortunately, according to some reports, they had missed chance to learn from previous experience. If they had learned, they might have avoided this PR disaster.
Whenever accident get this much press, you know that lawsuits will follow. That’s a “lesson learned” that shouldn’t be forgotten. If Toyota had found the root causes of these accidents and fixed them two years ago, they wouldn’t be facing these serious lawsuits.
One more thing. How serious are these lawsuits? I saw one blog posting saying that he wouldn’t be surprised if Toyota declared bankruptcy because of the lawsuits. I don’t think that’s possible … how many suits would it take to make Toyota go bankrupt? But the fact that somebody might suggest it makes one think twice about what the final cost of this quality/safety issue will be.
They question Toyota’s management, organization, and cost cutting efforts.
Should Toyota release their root cause analysis for the world to see to stop the speculation in the press? Or would the official root cause analysis just raise questions about the depth and accuracy of the analysis and of the resulting corrective actions? Surely it must be done by now with approved corrective actions on the way to the dealers. No matter what, it may come out as future lawsuits (and their will be many) make their way through US courts.
Why should you have been in this equipment troubleshooting class in New Orleans?
1. You are a Saints fan… that would add two more people
2. People in your company use equipment in day to day activities…. that would be everyone
3. You are a safety leader and need a way into the equipment operator’s world (you can help them and get a better understanding of what they do)
When should you register for the Equifactor® Course?
1. Before the class (this makes sure we have enough course materials for you and you don’t have to pull your hair out to find a last minute hotel room)
2. Let us know during the 2-day class that you want to stay for the third day. (Like the three guys from ATEC below)
Here is the schedule for the upcoming Equipment Troubleshooting Courses:
Malcolm Gresham, TapRooT® Instructor from PSG in Australia, sent the pictures below from a TapRooT® Course for Fluor Rail Services. Fluor Corporation is a licensed TapRooT® User and Fluor Rail Services maintains and constructs track infrastructure that links Rio Tinto’s Iron Ore operations in the Pilbara Region. Malcolm says that it is the largest privately owned Rail Network in the world.
The pictures below show teams working on their final exercise in the 2-Day TapRooT® Incident Investigation and Root Cause Analysis Course.
When using the Equifactor® module of the TapRooT® Software, you have the opportunity to store some very specific data in each Symptom or Possible Cause that can help your equipment experts with their troubleshooting efforts. Each of these Equifactor® items has an associated Equifactor® Reference area that allows you to store your own custom data.
For example, if I want to add a new Equifactor® item for troubleshooting a diesel engine that hesitates, you would start with the System Configuration – Equifactor Maintenance, and adding your own custom Diesel Engine troubleshooting table. You might start with this:
You could then add any extra information about that item by clicking “Edit” and adding your custom information:
You can even add a picture of your problem by clicking on “Image.”
Once you are done, you could then start a new incident and open your Equifactor® tables. You can access the Equifactor® Reference section either by right-clicking on the item, or clicking the Equifactor® Reference button at the bottom:
The new information is now available, including the picture you attached:
This information will make a great tool for your new troubleshooters!
Seems like a very simple evolution: drain the excess liquid out of a rail car tank. What could go wrong with that?
It depends on how you “drain” the car. In this case, maybe your workers decided to do a really good job, and hooked up a vacuum truck to the tank, instead of just draining excess. This video shows the results of this type of mistake.
What safeguards would you put in place to prevent this type of problem?
As part of the Maintenance / Equipment Reliability Track at the TapRooT® Summit in Nashville last week, Heinz Bloch gave some terrific presentations. During one of these talks, he impressed upon all of us the importance of always learning. You can’t just assume you know everything you need to know to be successful; you must keep reading and learning to improve your professional knowledge.
In keeping with the ideals of the Summit, we don’t just throw ideas out there and then let you try to figure it out how to implement. We give you concrete methods to move forward with your improvement ideas. So to help you improve your equipment troubleshooting and reliability knowledge, Heinz was kind enough to send us his suggested reading list. A library of must-reads from the foremost equipment reliability expert. It doesn’t get much better than that!
Here’s a link to the list: http://www.taproot.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/hpb-essential-reliability-library.pdf
Perhaps an Equifactor® checklist for troubleshooting M4 problems could help collect data?
A quote from the article:
“Battlefield surveys show that nearly 90 percent of soldiers are satisfied with their M4s, according to Brig. Gen. Peter Fuller, head of the Army office that buys soldier gear. Still, the rifle is continually being improved to make it even more reliable and lethal.“
I bet those with jammed weapons in a firefight aren’t among the satisfied.
“How to Become Best in Class in Equipment Reliability by Maximizing Uptime” was a best practice session presented by Heinz Bloch at the 2009 TapRooT® Summit.
“Troubleshooting Plant Process Upsets: The Application of Customizable Equifactor® Troubleshooting Tables to Capture the Knowledge of Your Sages and Wiz Kids” was a best practice session presented by Jason Laws at the 2009 TapRooT® Summit.
I’m getting behind on my Summit reporting because of all the amazing talks and amazing discussions I’m having. I just can’t keep up.
Here are some of the highlights…
Success Stories: I attended a session with two success stories yesterday. Ron Pryor (Alcoa) and Theresa Guay (Irving Oil) presented their stories of how they were using TapRooT® to get significant improvements in environmental, quality, and safety performance. We’ll post the Success Stories at http://www.taproot.com/about.php when we get back from the Summit, so you can look for the details there. But what you can’t get from the written word is the Q&A that occurs at the session. For that, you must attend the Summit.
Personal Development: Next, I went to a great presentation by Jennifer Mounce that was very interactive. She taught us about coaching ourselves to get better and bring our personal performance to the next level. Once again, you had to be there to participate and learn. It really gave me some good ideas to act on to improve my own performance.
(E.D. signing books. Mark, E.D., & Linda just before the 70’s themed party.)
Lessons from Success: Then we had an inspiring General Session talk by E.D. Hill. Wow! E.D. is smart, insightful, and a great speaker about lessons from the success of others and her own career. After her talk she spent and hour and a half with us signing her book and talking to people one-on-one. She even came to our reception where the band Entice entertained Summit participants.
Lessons from an Accident: This morning I heard an amazing talk about an injury, the aftermath, and the investigation that changed the standard of care for electrical injuries in the province of Ontario. Jim Thompson, Brian Tink, and Dr. Joel Fish shared their story which was very impressive. We had to cut off the Q&A and let people continue the discussion at the break.
Equipment Failure Lessons Learned: I’m now in a talk about “Persistent Equipment Failures” by Ken Bloch. He’s talking about equipment failures that cause process safety incidents. One neat detail so far … He quoted a statistic that process plants could expect one fire per 1000 pump repairs.
More later.
Plant to attend the 2010 Summit so that you can learn, improve, and share best practices with some of the best companies in the world.
When will it be?
October 20-22, 2010, in San Antonio.
Planning has already started and I’ll let you know more when things are confirmed.
The Bonhomme Richard was stranded pier-side while 3 of it’s 5 service turbine generators were repaired by Norfolk Naval Shipyard workers and ship’s force personnel. For details, see an article in Navy Times:
When troubleshooting an equipment failure, it is often tough to figure out exactly where to start. You’ve probably already eliminated the easy possibilities, and you now find yourself confronted with a list of crossed-off troubleshooting steps. Now what?
Just like in a normal TapRooT® investigation, ALWAYS START WITH A SNAPCHART®. In fact, the more complex the problem, the important it is to make sure you understand the sequence of events that lead to the failure. Luckily, machinery normally breaks for very specific reasons, so understanding this sequence can get you a long way towards resolving the problem.
Build that Spring SnapCharT®. You may find that you don’t have much to start with, so just record what you know. Next, pull out the Equifactor® tables. Run through your symptom, find your possible causes, and hand these off to your mechanics. Have them report what they find. You’ll collect new information about your failure, some of which you may not be sure really applies to your particular problem. Just add your findings to your SnapCharT®, and review what you have. You’ll find that you have lots of new questions regarding your sequence of events that will lead your investigators down the path to a final result.
The SnapCharT® (in conjunction with Equifactor®) is the key. Use this tool to keep your thoughts organized. If your sequence of events is not totally clear, try moving the events around to try out different scenarios until you have a sequence that fits your facts.
Once you have discovered your physical cause, this will probably be one of your Causal Factors. “Repair Tech used an uncertified bearing during refurbishment.” You now have a good place to start asking your normal TapRooT® questions (training level, procedure use, level of supervision, etc).
Chris Vallee and I are currently attending the Reliable Plant 2009 Conference in Columbus, OH. This conference concentrates on machinery lubrication technologies, so you would expect that the lubrication vendors would be the most popular, right? Amazingly enough, we have had nearly 1/4 of all attendees stop by our booth to discuss equipment troubleshooting and root cause analysis! Everyone seems to understand that correctly lubricating your equipment takes more than just the best oil or grease. You also have to ensure that the human element is taken care of. When machinery problems arise, human error usually plays a starring role.
I noticed on page 3 that this type of crank shaft failure occurs several times each year, but it doesn’t normally result in the entire engine detaching from the vehicle. This time, the failure consequences were more severe than normal.
Don’t wait for your repeat failures to result in more catastrophic results. Come to the Summit and attend the 2-Day Equifactor® Equipment Troubleshooting and Root Cause Analysis course in Nashville, and learn how to prevent repeat failures before they cause you this much pain.
Chris Vallee and I are currently attending the Reliable Plant 2009 Conference in Columbus, OH. This conference concentrates on machinery lubrication technologies, so you would expect that the lubrication vendors would be the most popular, right? Amazingly enough, we have had nearly 1/4 of all attendees stop by our booth to discuss equipment troubleshooting and root cause analysis! Everyone seems to understand that correctly lubricating your equipment takes more than just the best oil or grease. You also have to ensure that the human element is taken care of. When machinery problems arise, human error usually plays a starring role.
