By Bob Granath
NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Florida
A pharmacy is an establishment where professionals prepare and dispense medicines to keep people in good health. At NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, an Oil Pharmacy has been set up to prepare and dispense petroleum products to keep a variety of machines operating properly.
The number of machines and other assets with moving parts at the sprawling spaceport is extensive. Oils are used in everything from a lathe in the Launch Equipment Shop to the crawler-transporter, to cranes in the Vehicle Assembly Building — these and other areas of responsibility fall under Jacobs’ Test and Operations Support Contract, or TOSC. The contract provides overall management and implementation of ground systems capabilities, flight hardware processing and launch operations at Kennedy.
“To meet these needs, about three years ago we assembled a team of engineers, technicians and managers to develop a standardized naming and testing process,” said Tim King, Jacobs Oil Pharmacy manager. “There also was a need to set up a facility to consolidate testing, storage and distribution of oils and petroleum products used in equipment maintained under TOSC.”
Jacobs’ TOSC Oil Program Requirements Team found that each shop ordered oils as needed. There was no standardized naming system for oil and petroleum products, causing some confusion when one product might have multiple names. Additionally, there was no consistent system for testing the quality of the products.
The team’s recommendations led to the formation of the Oil Pharmacy, located in the east end of Kennedy’s Thermal Protection System Facility. Once an inventory of machines needing oils was completed, King explained that the next step was to consolidate ordering, storage and distribution.
“After centralizing the process, we found the new system to be much more efficient,” he said. “There was a significant reduction in the amount of oils being purchased, resulting in reduced costs and waste.”
The team at the Oil Pharmacy became the sole point of contact for ordering oils needed throughout Jacobs TOSC. About 1,300 gallons of various oil products currently are available. King noted that once oils are accepted into stock, they are stored in color-coded containers with standardized labels. This makes it much easier to separate products of different types and weights, providing quality and efficiency.
By keeping needed oils and petroleum products in stock at a single Kennedy location, users now simply contact the Oil Pharmacy and requests are filled much faster with the right oil and needed amount at the right time.
“We also implemented a sampling process,” King said. “A baseline procedure was set up to test oils as they arrive from vendors. This allows us to ensure they meet our specifications.”
Not only are newly arriving oils being tested to establish compatibility with the intended machines, specialists in the Oil Pharmacy take samples from equipment from around the center.
“We’ve found that if oil in a piece of equipment tests good, there is no need to change it on a time-based schedule,” said T.J. Avitabile, a Jacobs Maintenance and Reliability technician. “This test not only is a chance to make sure the oils in machines are acceptable, it also can give us a warning of potential lubrication problems.”
For example, if oil samples taken from a piece of equipment contain small metal fragments, it may be a sign that moving parts are wearing.
“Catching that early could prevent a catastrophic failure in the future,” Avitabile said.
Another process taken on by the Oil Pharmacy is recycling used petroleum products for non-flight hardware. Once filtered and treated with chemicals, many of the oils are not only reusable, but much cleaner than when first received from the vendor.
“During 2016, we refined about 2,800 gallons of oils,” King said.
Feedback on the work of the Oil Pharmacy from members of the Jacobs TOSC Team has been positive.
“Our team worked hard to make the Oil Pharmacy a reality,” King said. “Groups across Jacobs TOSC have been supportive and helped make it a success.”