Put A Filter On It!
How is your filter these days? Not your coffee filter although you know you need that one! Not the filter that keeps you from saying the wrong thing. How about the filter on the equipment that you operate/manage/sell/inspect/support/buy every day?
Whether you are an operator or a manager, an inspector or a purchasing manager, somewhere in your facility is an expensive and critical piece of equipment or process line that has some type of filtration in it. Filtering air, liquids, gasses, light or something else I can't think of right now, there are filters that are doing a critical job in allowing the revenue producing equipment to operate at peak performance in terms of quality and dollars. At least it should be... Is it?
I have found in many companies filtration is viewed at best as a necessary evil and at worst an unnecessary evil and quite often it's just forgotten about. That is until it shuts things down or causes problems and rejects you need to spend hours and dollars trying to identify and fix. Then you have the epiphany that for a few bucks a costly mistake or shutdown could have been avoided.
The worst part about this? Filters are usually (usually) pretty inexpensive, easy to maintain and actually can have a huge impact on performance. It costs a whole lot less to filter that plating tank, air line, machine coolant or wet process than it does to shut the line down and try and figure out what went wrong. A lot of filters literally cost about $5 each and much of the equip comes with the filter and pumps built in so all your changing is a cartridge or something. So if it's cheap and it's easy and it really helps... Why then is it so often last or whatever comes after last on the list of things to maintain?
If you are an operator or a manager supervising a line or a piece of equipment it can be the classic case of not seeing the forest for the trees. There are so many other variables and moving parts that need attention we often forget about the smallest and most hidden of the details. Filters are most often so out of sight, under a solution or inside a machine or process line that they don't scream for attention when you're reviewing performance and maintenance. You're most often so on top of these processes that you can't see what's under your nose.
If you are an inspector or sales person and your evaluating and presenting a process or a finished product you may not find the issues poor filtration cause to be that dramatic or have that big of an impact. But if a texture is constantly changing, a color is slightly off or a raw material you're using isn't quite up to par, you may not find the situation a cause for reject but, are you giving the end user the absolute best your process is capable of and... If your competitor can do it better, faster, smoother, brighter, easier or longer lasting... You'r product may be "good enough" only until somebody finds it's pretty easy to do it a little better.
And if you are the purchaser or the signer of the checks, how does that lack of or poor filtration impact you? Are getting the best bang for your buck out of the raw materials or equipment you signed off on and paid for? Aren't you as the purchaser obligated to help make sure the best and cheapest filters are always available and affordable? And if you paid for the 6 figure process and set it up, are you asking the operators to do something less than optimum and minimizing your return on investment? Your job is makes sure your equipment is running right and the people responsible understand your support of maximizing the potential of the process, especially at the expense of just a few dollars.
So filtration can and should be an important item on your check list of the little things to stay ahead of for your maintenance and operations team. And everybody owns a piece of the responsibility for making it happen and supporting it. Here is an example of a situation where filtration ignored and created a costly and critical mistake.
I was supervising a production area for a critical optical application and we were having defects at our customer after an expensive and time consuming assembly operation. The point where the defects were coming visible was literally at the end of the assembly process and were expensive and shattered schedules. After an exhausting search it turns out a filter inside an air handler that needed to be changed yearly had never been changed after 5 years. The internal filter material broke down and the process air was contaminated with an alkaline desiccant. The spots this caused were invisible until the heat and chemistry of assembly caused the material to cause corrosion on the most visible of surfaces. Disaster! 2 weeks, thousands of sales dollars and hundreds of dollars in other repairs and changes as we chased the problem later, we changed the $100 in line filter and the problem went away.
Avoidable and easily done, not hard to swallow financially and having a huge impact on quality, putting a filter on it... or in it... or with it... is worth it's filter weight in gold plating solution!