A common mistake among companies is to fix problems as they occur rather than preventing those problems from happening. One opportunity for prevention is through the health of your lubricants. It has been estimated that most production organizations lose between 10 and 15% of their plants total maintenance budget each year due to downstream effects of poor lubrication. Although a robust PdM program will include condition feedback technologies such as oil analysis, vibration analysis, ultrasonic testing and infrared thermography, these tools provide data on a failure that has already begun. A precision lubrication strategy requires root cause elimination. Installing desiccant breathers, filtering new oil, and protecting your oil during transfer to your equipment are all ways to decrease the root cause of machine downtime.