While every bearing carries the promise of long, reliable service, an alarming proportion fail well before their time, often with devastating repercussions for businesses. Unplanned stoppages disrupt operations, halt production, erode efficiency, and drive-up maintenance and replacement costs. Apart from the financial impact, these failures introduce unnecessary safety risks for maintenance teams and squander valuable resources; time, energy and materials could be better invested in productive operations.
“These premature failures are seldom random,” emphasises SKF South Africa Application Engineering Manager, Janus Bezuidenhout. “They often arise from identifiable and avoidable causes including errors and flawed practices in selection, mounting, lubrication, alignment, condition monitoring and maintenance procedures. With the right knowledge, correct tools and maintenance practices, all these issues can be prevented and this is where SKF makes the difference. We get to the root cause of the problem and provide the best product and technology solutions supported by technical expertise that enable maintenance teams to extend bearing life, ensure reliable performance and eliminate avoidable breakdowns.”
Janus highlights the most common causes of bearing failure: “Incorrect or insufficient lubrication is the single largest contributor, accounting for around 36% of failures, particularly where inaccessible components hinder proper and consistent lubrication. Fatigue from overloads or incorrect maintenance represents roughly 34% of premature failures, even though early warning signs are often easy to detect. Approximately 16% of premature bearing failures are caused by poor fitting, incorrect mounting forces or the lack of proper tools and trained maintenance practices. And finally, contamination is responsible for about 14% of failures, highlighting the importance of keeping bearings and lubricants properly sealed and protected during operation.”
Condition monitoring solutions like the SKF Multilog IMx-16 are fundamental to bearing failure prevention
In addition to the correct maintenance tools, SKF offers lubrication systems, including the Lincoln product brand as well as condition monitoring solutions that play a pivotal role in preventing premature bearing failure and protecting performance, boosting reliability and efficiency, ultimately extending bearing life. These automated lubrication systems ensure the precise delivery of the right amount of lubricant at the right time to the correct points, removing the risks of over or underlubrication and the multitude of costly issues these can create. Through advanced condition monitoring technologies, SKF enables operators to automatically track machine and component health. Realtime data provides early warnings of potential failures, allowing preventative maintenance to be carried out in time and avoiding the expense and disruption of premature breakdowns.
To further assist customers and operators in improving bearing performance, SKF has developed a host of practical online resources that simplify maintenance and make reliability easier to achieve. “We have developed a series of videos that showcases bestpractice approaches and correct tooling across our maintenance platforms, lubrication product range and associated services. The videos provide clear product demonstrations of proper use, combining short, practical demos with detailed instructional guides that make reliability simple – from first mount to final dismount.”
Additional video content highlights how SKF maintenance solutions boost uptime, cut costs and protect maintenance teams in action. Complex tasks are simplified into clear, stepbystep guides for confident, smarter maintenance covering correct mounting, precise lubrication, precision alignment, continuous condition monitoring and safe dismounting. Each video shows proven methods, common pitfalls to avoid and how every tool helps extend asset life while reducing energy use and unplanned downtime. The easytouse SKF Bearing Assist app complements every demo, providing clear instructions, calculators and checklists to support maintenance teams directly in the field.
In addition to digital support, a complete catalogue is also available that brings SKF’s full portfolio of maintenance and lubrication products together in one place, helping teams reduce failures, improve safety and maximise bearing life. This comprehensive guide makes it easy to select the right tools and solutions for every task, supporting best practice and delivering lasting reliability across operations.
SKF also has a Product Assistant on the website (https://www.skf.com/group/support/product-assistant), an ‘Ask AI’ function, that enables the user to obtain guidance from product questions to engineering decisions, with the support of generated AI. “It is like a virtual Application Engineer,” explains Janus.
Janus stresses that the bearing lifecycle approach also supports remanufacture and re-use. “The sustainability drive is a priority focus from SKF and the detection of early damage on the bearing will enable the remanufacturing and re-use of the bearing, reducing cost and turnaround time for the customer.”
He wraps up: “SKF offers everything customers and operators need to enhance bearing performance and reliability. By optimising rotating assets, we boost uptime and production while ensuring safer, more sustainable operations. From correct mounting tools and precision lubrication to advanced condition monitoring and digital support, SKF provides the complete portfolio that helps prevent failures, cut costs, improve efficiencies and extend asset life. It’s about turning proven best practices into everyday confidence, keeping machines running and performing at their best, production flowing seamlessly, people protected and businesses resilient, competitive and sustainable.”
