Five factors to help unlock hidden efficiencies in your lubricant strategy
A blog by Vivek Mathanasekaran
Going beyond price per litre
This part of a series of blogs exploring the hidden performance manufacturers can uncover in their operations. Explore the topic further in our hidden performance report.
Vivek Mathanasekaran
Castrol Technical Excellence Lead
Lubricant and fluid strategies are often based on price per litre, with procurement seeking the most cost-effective solution that meets the specification requirements. But without collaboration across departments, this approach can result in hidden efficiencies throughout a business - from maintenance to operations and even waste disposal – all stemming from the original lubricant choice.
A Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) helps uncover these areas by viewing data and processes holistically, and ensuring all key stakeholders are involved in the decision-making.
Unlock hidden efficiencies in your lubricant strategy using these five factors:
1. Know your full cost picture
Most businesses know what they pay per litre. But fewer have visibility of how lubrication impacts across their entire operation. Lubricants typically account for just a small portion of total running costs, yet they directly influence downtime, maintenance labour, component life, waste disposal and energy consumption. Decisions made on lubricant price per litre alone or a single application are made without considering all potential saving avenues.
A lubricant strategy should be measured by the value it creates across an operation, not simply its price per litre.
2. Connecting the dots
Procurement tracks spend, maintenance tracks failures, operators track fluid levels. Bring this data together and a different picture emerges which reflects the entire organisation. For example, a global steel producer reduced its costs and waste disposal charges by 90% by shifting its maintenance from fixed-interval servicing to condition-based monitoring by leveraging its data to improve resource efficiency. The opportunity was always there - it just needed the right people looking at the full picture together.
3. Involve the right people
Lubrication decisions should involve maintenance, operations, engineering and finance, this helps surface a broader set of considerations and can lead to more profitable outcomes. With 78% of manufacturing executives planning to increase investment in smart manufacturing initiatives, lubrication strategy is increasingly a boardroom conversation, not just a maintenance one.
4. Identify patterns to feed in the diagnosis
Repeat component failures, rising maintenance frequency and lubricant overconsumption are patterns, not isolated incidents. A gearbox designed to last 20 years failing in six months is often a direct consequence of the wrong lubricant, misdiagnosed as a mechanical problem. The instinct is often to swap the lubricant. The more valuable action is asking what is causing the problem - whether it’s contamination, over-application, leakage or wrong specification, only addressing the root cause will help stop the same cost recurring.
5. Move beyond manual and reactive monitoring
Weekly manual checks can provide you with data on key lubricant parameters at one point in time, but they produce limited trend data, leave wide windows for quality variation and mean issues only surface at the point of failure. Continuous monitoring of oil condition, coolant concentration and equipment or asset parameters can help identify performance and health trends within days rather than months, enabling faster decisions and measurable improvements before problems escalate. Water contamination in neat oils, for example, can go undetected for months on a manual schedule, turning what would have been a simple top-up into a full sump flush of up to 30,000 litres.
Moving from reactive maintenance to data-led intervention can help manufacturers identify problems before they become costly failures.
An important, hidden 6th factor is collaboration with a lubrication expert
Castrol works with manufacturers at every stage, from an initial cost review at a single machine to a full Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) programme across an entire operation. Combining tribology expertise, smart monitoring and cross-functional data analysis, we can help you find the value that's already there.
For more information on Castrol’s Total Cost of Ownership approach and what the efficiencies it can deliver visit: Industrial lubricants TCO
About the author
Vivek Mathanasekaran is an experienced industrial marketing and technical solutions professional with 20 years of expertise in developing customer-centric product and service solutions for industrial customers, with deep expertise in industrial lubricants, metalworking fluids, key account management, value-based commercial offerings and digital service innovation.
