Bearing procurement management

Abdul Wadud, CEO & Management Consultant, TRANSFORM

Bearing is a small but an important component in spinning, textile and other industries. But it is quite interesting that quality of bearing has only 10% effect on the life of the bearing. Rather mounting, alignment and lubrication contributes more with respect to the life of bearing which accounts 16%, 34% and 36%, respectively.

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Mounting:
 

Mounting of bearing is done either in cold or hot mounting process. If we don not use proper tools and procedure in mounting the bearing, life of bearing would be reduced and result in invisible cost generation.

Alignment:

Bearing is connected with the drive through coupling, belt or pully. Proper alignment is very important to ensure proper functioning of machine as well as life of the bearing. Without proper tools right alignment cannot be ensured.

Lubrication:

Lubrication of bearing is very important.

First is to select the right lubricant suitable for the bearing as per the NLGI (National Lubricating Grease Institute) guideline.

Secondly, determine the dozing quantity suitable for the bearing and use of appropriate tools.

Third is to determine the dozing interval, depending on the contamination level as per ISO standard.

Condition Monitoring:

Using appropriate tools to monitor the condition of bearing is important.

Dismounting:

At some point, the bearing will reach the end of its service life and will have to be replaced. Although the bearing may not be used again, it is extremely important to dismount it correctly so that the service life of the replacement bearing is not compromised. Firstly, the use of proper dismounting methods tools will help prevent damage to other machine components, such as the shaft and housing, which are often re-used. Secondly, incorrect dismounting techniques can be hazardous to maintenance personnel.

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For gear box endoscope is also used to monitor the condition of the bearing without dismantling the gear box.

Types of Maintenance Practices:

Different companies use different practices of maintenance of bearing like;

  1. Run to failure: Run till it fails.
  2. Preventive: Change all as per schedule.
  3. Predictive: They use tools to monitor the condition of the bearing through observing the sound, vibration, temperature and visual inspection. Take action as per the condition of the bearing. This is a good practice.
  4. Pro-active: This is an approach which finds the root cause of each and every failure and eliminates the root cause so that such problems doses not repeat in future. This is very effective.

Conclusion:

Bearing is bought by procurement, mill management approves indent from factory, mill engineers select the bearing and fitters and foreman does the installation and maintenance. It is very important that the whole value chain have adequate knowledge that would reduce wrong selection, unnecessary communication, poor procurement and poor maintenance.

So, if the A) Basic and B) Life Cycle of bearing is trained by the established bearing manufacturers it would not only ensure better management of bearing but also reduce cost and improve profit of the mills.