Most companies spend a lot of money training their maintenance personnel to troubleshoot a hydraulic system. If we focused on preventing system failure then we could spend less time and money on troubleshooting a hydraulic system. We normally accept hydraulic system failure rather than deciding not to accept hydraulic failure as the norm. Let’s spend the time and money to eliminate hydraulic failure rather than preparing for failure. I worked for Kendall Company in the 1980’s and we changed our focus from reactive to proactive maintenance on our hydraulic systems and thus eliminating unscheduled hydraulic failure. We will talk about the right way to perform maintenance on a hydraulic system utilizing the Maintenance Best Practices.
Lack of maintenance of hydraulic systems is the leading cause of component and system failure yet most maintenance personnel don’t understand proper maintenance techniques of a hydraulic system. The basic foundation to perform proper maintenance on a hydraulic system has two areas of concern. The first area is Preventive Maintenance which is key to the success of any maintenance program whether in hydraulics or any equipment which we need reliability. The second area is corrective maintenance, which in many cases can cause additional hydraulic component failure when it is not performed to standard.