Knowledge centre ITW Spraytec Expert

6 steps to successful maintenance in the agri-food sector

ROCOL has been creating lubricants for its customers for 15 years. This has resulted in a vast database of standard operating procedures specific to machines covering equipment in the bakery, meat, chocolate, beverage, animal feed and canning industries.

We began our TPM journey with Unilever, Norwich, in 2005 and have worked with many other food manufacturers since then to help improve their operators. Through a six-step process, our team can impart the knowledge and experience needed to enable anyone to perform lubrication tasks within a factory:

1. Site Survey: A comprehensive and detailed site lubrication survey covering all your individual plant lubrication requirements. The aim is to match each application with the correct product, application method, and lubrication interval.

2. SOP Creation : We take a flexible approach here, as some companies prefer their internal teams to create SOPs to establish a level of ownership. We are happy to provide consulting services to facilitate this creation or to develop customized SOPs for your organization.

3. Storage Compliance: We help sort, polish, and standardize lubrication storage areas to ensure these often-overlooked zones fully comply with food safety regulations. Numerous before-and-after photographs are taken to provide a clear overview of the lubrication storage area’s condition.

4. Site Lubrication Marking: We have a portfolio of different marking types and styles, tailored to each client. We can help guide you toward a marking solution that will suit your site’s needs. Advice on the best locations to place and mount labels to ensure they are visible, durable, and future-proof can also be provided.

5. Training: We offer a range of training courses, from lubrication basics (e.g., how to load a grease gun or lubricate a bearing) to more in-depth, site-specific training (e.g., how to calculate the amount and frequency of grease required for a specific bearing or what to look for when performing a lubrication check). We provide a comprehensive training kit for your maintenance staff and lubrication champions to enable them to support and mentor all personnel on effective lubrication. We also offer a train-the-trainer course to enable our customers to bring all the necessary lubrication skills in-house.

6. Training Facilities: We can help you set up an on-site lubrication training room. We have a set of training posters highlighting all the key points of lubrication training, which can be adapted to your site’s specific needs and produced in multiple languages.

If you are currently implementing TPM (or a similar maintenance philosophy) in your plant and would like help creating SOPs for your lubrication tasks, we can assist you. By combining our technically differentiated lubricants with best-in-class lubrication procedures, we can help you improve your plant’s overall equipment efficiency ( OEE ).