quote:
Originally posted by Jim:
"Generally in industry users only use the recommended lubricants by the machine manufacturer even better lubricants for the same application is available."
----------------------------------
Great question. This is an issue throughout the industry. Why ad another lube to your site based on warranty issues? Why bother trying to consolidate the products at your location, when the engineering group has no idea what you have accomplished by consolidating lubes.
What could we do?
1)Let the engineering group know what products you have on site & discourage bringing in another product, if possible.
2)What do you do when you do not have a product that meets the required spec's?
Oil analysis could be used as documentation that supports healthy machinery. Wouldn't this be honored by a warranty?
Anyone have experience with this?
Jim
The very important issue here is the engine/equipment cost. If it is not much expensive, some times OEMs do agree with users request to use other than OEM recommended oil brand if the oil specificationperformance is similar. But, OEMs very rarely agree to use non recommended brand if the equipment is expensive and its operational parameters rely on oil condition and oil specification is not well defined. Typical example for this kind of application is diesel engine power plant generators. I like to highlight my experience that I faced recently. One of our clients wanted to use non OEM recommended engine oil in WARTSILA diesel engine (10 MW) but WARTSILA did not agree and the engine was covered under warranty.Finally, WARTSILA agreed for a field test with non recommended oil covering almost a year. Actually this field test has lead to obtaining WARTSILA approval.
Neither I support nor oppose OEMs view for insisting to use recommended oil brand use. Let us analyse ourselves the issues involved:
1) OEMs view these type cases on global basis; not on any particular country or region basis.
2) Not all oil suppliers are reputed and credible
3)Oil testing can be credible tool for performance evaluation, but oil labs testing repeatabilty/reproduciblity, sampling techniques etc pose number of questions rather than answers.
Kumar
kumartr2@yahoo.com