Tips to Improve Your Pump Uptime

June 10, 2019

Process reliability depends on keeping your pumps running. When implementing a pump reliability program, there are many things to consider. It may seem difficult to get started, but help is available!

Understanding your goals and identifying "bad actors" is the most important first step. Inspection, verification, data analysis — each is important in understanding what needs to be improved in your plant.

The rewards of a successful program include:

  • more mean time between failure
  • better efficiency
  • lower costs
Carotek Tipsheet Cover

Pump Troubleshooting Tips

Find the bad actors

Assemble a team to find your bad actor pumps:

  • Engineers

  • Management

  • Operators

  • Maintenance technicians

  • Pump vendor representative

Use these tips to find the pumps that need attention:

  1. Start with a list of the MTBF numbers. Focus on pumps that fall on the low end of the MTBF, such as the bottom 25%.

  2. Consider adding to the list any pumps that see few hours of operation, but still fail frequently.

  3. Estimate the cost of production loss for each of the pumps in question.

  4. Create charts showing frequency of outage, cost of repairs, and production loss.

  5. Determine which equipment tag numbers are the worst performers that need to be addressed.