SMART Principles to Repair & Troubleshooting (pump case #1)

Once upon a time: in an operating plant, a manager was frustrated by various "expert's " comments & responses: dictating & not grounded approach.

So he led an effort: a uSer & Modular Approach, with a crew.

Study Case: Reciprocating Plunger High Pressure Pump

Symptom: pump discharge pressure fluctuating heavily & affect whole plant

the crew did: uSer & Modular: SMART approach:?

1.uSer - blackbox perspective; they studied the overall integrated system as a whole - what it does. Pump has to suck & discharge consistently but they found leakage & vibrating pulsation

2.Modular functioned view & Analyze; many parts in exploded view diagram & exhaustive official manual book were intimidating, but they followed up with: disassembly carefully whatever they might categorize as sub systems:?what the sub system does: the seals basic function & the internal suction check valve spring basic function: they found failures (individual parts: worn seals & broken springs)

3.Replace & reassembly (gRounded approach); with available parts, they MEASUREd & tried available parts in the vendor nearest to them (rather than OEM distant in other continent) they utilized local fabricated steel springs, local available nearest dimensioned O-rings & seals, fabricated steel stuffing-rings

4.Testing & observe; they tested on the response of the system; though the capacity reduced but the pressure & flow were steady (not fluctuating), using uSer & Modular approach they found out that the breakdown of the seal & spring was due to a certain root cause.

The Root Cause: with same uSer & Modular gRounded approach they identified & rectified a further Root Cause: to be continued ….