When it comes to preventive maintenance, used oil analysis is one of the most cost-effective tools in your reliability toolbox. It’s more than just a lab test; it’s a window into the health of your equipment. Yet many organizations dutifully send in samples and skim the reports without truly challenging the process or realizing how much more value they could be extracting.
At Fluid Life, we believe your lab shouldn’t just be a vendor checking boxes, it should be a true partner, helping you amplify ROI, improve MTBF, and elevate your program to new levels of continuous improvement without overcomplicating or replacing what already works.
10 Questions to Ask
Here are 10 critical questions you should be asking from your oil analysis lab, and Fluid Life’s answers to each one.
1. How is your lab certified or accredited?
Not all labs are created equal. Certifications like ISO/IEC 17025:2017 validate a lab’s technical competence and ensure consistent, reliable results.
At Fluid Life, all four of our labs are accredited by CALA to ISO/IEC 17025:2017 for specific tests, but more importantly, we treat accreditation as a starting point, not the finish line. We help you translate that confidence in data into better decisions that drive up MTBF and lower total cost of ownership (TCO), delivering measurable ROI while complementing your existing maintenance practices.
2. Can you provide customized alarm limits for our specific equipment?
Generic alarms are better than nothing, but tailored baselines specific to your equipment, conditions, and goals unleash far more value.
Fluid Life works alongside your team to set equipment-specific flagging limits, ensuring your alerts reflect real-world risk, not generic thresholds. This reduces false positives, avoids missed warnings, and keeps your production and efficiency climbing, all while enhancing the solid foundation you’ve already built.
3. How do you ensure sample handling integrity?
If a sample is mishandled, the result is worthless. Ask how your lab controls the chain of custody and rejects suspect samples before analysis.
At Fluid Life, we treat every sample like a diagnostic mission, safeguarding its integrity every step of the way. This protects your data quality, shields your decisions from bad inputs, and strengthens confidence in your strategy, partnering with you to maintain and improve every inch of the journey, rather than creating unnecessary complexity.
4. What’s your average turnaround time and how is it measured?
“Fast” is relative. Some labs measure TAT from receipt, others from log-in. Clarify the metric, and how speed impacts decision-making.
Fluid Life measures turnaround from the moment your sample is pulled to when actionable results are published. Our speed empowers your team to act before failures escalate, keeping unscheduled maintenance and uptime at peak levels while seamlessly fitting into your workflows.
5. Who interprets the results? An algorithm or a human expert?
Algorithms catch patterns; humans provide nuance. You deserve both.
At Fluid Life, proprietary algorithms flag key trends, while our analysts and reliability experts provide context, actionable insights, and strategic recommendations. This partnership approach gives you confidence to take the right actions, boosting MTBF, MTTF, extracting greater OEE, and building on your team’s strengths.
6. Can we talk directly to the analyst?
If you can’t talk to the person who interpreted your results, you’re left guessing, hanging in the dark.
With Fluid Life, you can pick up the phone and speak to a real reliability expert who understands your equipment and your goals, ensuring decisions align with your continuous improvement initiatives, augment what you already do well, and elevate outcomes without disruption. This is the culmination of holding each other accountable.
7. Do you track and report trends over time?
One result is a snapshot. Only trends tell the story of your equipment’s health trajectory.
Our myLab platform builds historical baselines, tracks trends, and empowers you to see progress over time, turning data into decisions, as well as into a powerful narrative that fuels continuous improvement, prolongs asset life, improves MTBF, and maximizes ROI, all without reinventing the wheel.
8. What contaminants do you test for, and can you test for more?
Don’t assume every lab tests for what matters to you. Some environments demand specialized testing, advanced trigger testing.
We offer industry-leading test packages and bespoke protocols tailored to your unique risks, collaborating with you to uncover hidden threats, protect your assets, and enhance what’s already working. This ensures your program stays lean, effective, and positive moving forward.
9. Do you provide actionable recommendations…or just data?
Data is meaningless without insight. Does your lab connect the dots for you?
At Fluid Life, every report comes with clear, actionable recommendations designed to strengthen your maintenance program. We partner with you to not just report findings, but help you take the right next step, delivering measurable and crucial results while complementing your existing processes.
10. Can you integrate with our CMMS or reliability software?
Manual data entry kills momentum and creates risk. Seamless integration improves decision-making and is in an essence “Risk Mitigation” in practice.
Our myLab platform integrates via API with many CMMS platforms like SAP and Maximo, enabling fluid, efficient workflows that support continuous improvement, protecting your bottom-line, without disrupting your established systems.
Stop Treating Oil Analysis Like a Checkbox
Used oil analysis is not just about catching the occasional red flag. It’s about fostering a proactive maintenance culture that continuously improves. That starts with asking the right questions, and yes holding your lab accountable to deliver more than a number on a page.
At Fluid Life, we partner with you to elevate your program, above and beyond status quo, improving in all measurable areas, and unlocking insights without burdening or complicating your people with burdensome redundant tasks.
Because your equipment speaks through its oil. Make sure you, and your lab, are truly listening.
Ready to extract the full value from your oil analysis program?
Contact us today to learn how Fluid Life turns oil analysis into actionable intelligence that protects your assets, your uptime, and your bottom-line.