Operational Guide - 5. Understanding Compliance

Compliance is the primary measure of performance in the Manual Greasing Monitoring Solution. It answers a single question: was the lubrication that was required actually delivered, correctly and on time?

This chapter explains what compliance means, how it is measured, what affects it and how to interpret the result.

In this chapter:

What Compliance Means
Why Compliance Matters
How Compliance Is Measured
How Tasks Are Classified
Volume Tolerance
Factors Affecting Compliance
Interpreting Compliance Results
What Compliance Does Not Tell You

What Compliance Means

Compliance measures how closely completed lubrication work matches the lubrication requirements configured for each grease point.

For every task the system generates, it assesses whether the task was completed, whether the correct grease was used, whether the correct volume was applied and whether it was done within the scheduled period.

Compliance is therefore a measure of execution against a defined standard. It is only as meaningful as the configuration it is measured against.

Why Compliance Matters

Incorrect lubrication is a leading cause of rotating equipment failure. Under-lubrication, over-lubrication, the wrong grease and missed intervals all shorten bearing life.

Compliance reporting provides:

Verification that lubrication work is being completed as planned
Early identification of points and routes that are being missed
Evidence for reliability, audit and maintenance reporting
A measurable baseline against which improvement can be demonstrated

How Compliance Is Measured

Compliance is reported through three headline metrics.

METRIC	WHAT IT MEASURES	WHAT REDUCES IT
Right Grease	Percentage of tasks where the Head Unit's assigned consumable matched the grease configured for the point	Any grease type violation
Right Amount	Percentage of tasks where the delivered volume fell within the acceptable range	Over-grease and under-grease events
Right Time	Percentage of tasks completed within the scheduled period	Late or uncompleted tasks

Reading the three metrics together is more informative than reading an overall figure. A site with strong Right Grease and Right Amount but poor Right Time has a scheduling or resourcing problem. A site with strong Right Time but poor Right Amount has a technique or configuration problem.

How Tasks Are Classified

Each task within the reporting period is classified as one of the following.

CLASSIFICATION	MEANING
Compliant	Completed, using the correct grease, within volume tolerance, and on time
Non-Compliant	Completed incorrectly, completed late, or due within the period and not completed
Pending	Due, but not yet completed and not yet expired — the task is still open and can still be completed

Pending tasks are not failures, but they are outstanding work. The task is live: it has fallen due, its window has not yet closed, and it can still be completed on time. A pending task becomes non-compliant only if the window closes with the work still not done.

This makes pending the status worth acting on. Compliant and non-compliant tasks are already settled, whereas a pending task is the work still within reach.

Volume Tolerance

Each grease point has a target volume, configured on the point record. A volume tolerance is applied to that target, defining the acceptable range above and below it.

For example, a target of 50 cc with a tolerance of ±20% gives an acceptable range of 40 cc to 60 cc. A delivery of 35 cc is recorded as an under-grease violation; a delivery of 70 cc is recorded as an over-grease violation.

Tolerance defaults to ±20%. It is not set in the dashboard — it is currently a backend setting that GreaseBoss configures for each account. The tolerance applying to a task is shown in the Vol. Tolerance column of the Tasks view, so you can always confirm the value in use without needing to look it up.

Tolerance should reflect what is realistically achievable with a manual grease gun at that point. A tolerance that is too tight will generate violations for work that was performed correctly. A tolerance that is too loose will allow genuine under-delivery to pass unnoticed. If the value in your account is producing either outcome, contact GreaseBoss Support to have it changed.

Purge points are treated differently. Where the volume required is not defined, any delivery greater than zero is compliant, and the actual volume is still recorded.

Factors Affecting Compliance

FACTOR	EFFECT ON COMPLIANCE
Task not completed within its window	Reduces Right Time; the task is recorded as non-compliant
Task completed late	Reduces Right Time; the task is recorded as non-compliant. Greasing the point after the window has closed does not make the task compliant
Over-delivery beyond tolerance	Reduces Right Amount
Under-delivery below tolerance	Reduces Right Amount
Consumable assigned to the Head Unit not matching the point requirement	Reduces Right Grease
Gun filled with a grease other than its assigned consumable	Not detected. The delivery is recorded against the assigned consumable and reports as compliant
Untracked grease events	Work is excluded from the calculation; the task may appear uncompleted
Head Unit not synchronised before the reporting period closes	Completed work does not appear; tasks appear uncompleted
Incorrect target volume in the configuration	Work done to the true requirement is recorded as a violation; work done to the incorrect target is recorded as compliant
Incorrect schedule frequency in the configuration	Work appears late or unnecessarily frequent
Points not mapped to a GreaseTag	No events can be attributed to the point

The last four are configuration and process issues rather than execution issues. They are common causes of poor compliance in the first weeks after commissioning, and should be ruled out before operator performance is questioned.

An incorrect requirement can also work the other way and produce a compliance result that looks better than the lubrication actually is. Compliance confirms that work matched the configured requirement; it cannot confirm that the requirement was right. Keeping targets, tolerances and frequencies current is what makes a high compliance figure meaningful.

Interpreting Compliance Results

When reviewing a compliance result, work from the general to the specific.

Start with the three headline metrics to identify which dimension is weak.
Use the detail sections — over-grease and under-grease violations, grease type violations, and scheduled tasks not completed — to find the affected points.
Group results by schedule, asset and location to identify whether the issue is site-wide or localised.
Compare against previous periods to establish whether it is new, recurring or improving.
Confirm that data is complete and current before concluding that work was not done.

A concentrated problem — one route, one asset, one Head Unit — usually has a single identifiable cause. A site-wide problem usually points to configuration, scheduling or training.

What Compliance Does Not Tell You

Compliance identifies conditions, not causes.

A non-compliant task confirms that a requirement was not met. It does not indicate whether the cause was access, resourcing, training, equipment condition, tag damage or a configuration error.

Compliance also cannot account for work that was performed but not recorded. Untracked grease events, unmapped points and unsynchronised Head Units all reduce compliance without any lubrication having been missed.

Most importantly, compliance cannot tell you whether the requirement itself was correct. A point configured with the wrong volume or the wrong frequency will report as compliant for as long as the work matches that configuration, regardless of what the bearing actually needs. A high compliance figure confirms that the lubrication program is being followed; it does not confirm that the program is right. This is why the configuration is reviewed periodically alongside the results — see Chapter 8.

For these reasons, a compliance result should be treated as the starting point for investigation rather than the conclusion. The investigation process is covered in Chapter 6.