Evans Improves Lubrication Processes

Name: Cody Evans

Age: 34

Company: ExxonMobil

Location: Houston, Texas

Cody Evans is a Lubrication Engineer at ExxonMobil. He services Houston and the surrounding area by assisting customers with questions and improving their processes. His years of experience combined with his knowledge of lubrication allows him to provide valuable insight into reliability and lubrication issues.

Q: What is your name, age, title, company name and company location (city and state)?

A: My name is Cody Evans. I am 34 years old. I am a Lubrication Engineer for ExxonMobil based in Houston, Texas, and supporting customers in surrounding cities, including Beaumont.

Q: How long have you worked for your company and which positions have you held?

A: I started at ExxonMobil as an intern over 11 years ago when the headquarters were in Virginia and have since held various positions. Following my internship, I transitioned into a full-time role in Wisconsin as an Industrial Sales Engineer, mostly covering paper mills, power plants and mining. I then went on to support south Houston down to Corpus Christi, Texas as a Senior Sales Engineer covering many of our larger national-sized accounts. Four years ago, I started my current role as a Lubrication Engineer and was given the opportunity to support our largest petrochemical customers, as well as our own Baytown and Beaumont Chemical Plants and Refineries. I was later invited to be a Global Turbine and Compressor subject matter expert and am currently the team lead for that group while in my current role.

Q: When did you get your start in machinery lubrication, and how did it happen?

A: I was recruited out of college. I studied Chemical Engineering and worked as a power tool mechanic to pay for schooling. The combination of formal and informal education helped me transition seamlessly into machinery lubrication. After formal lubrication training and onboarding with ExxonMobil, I started my deeper dive on the job.

Q: What types of training have you taken to get you to your current position?

A: Coming into my current position, I participated in a formal onboarding which included a four-month training program. Now every year, I take different trainings to continue my education and receive continual mentoring on the job. Some of my more memorable trainings have been AGMA gear failure analysis, SKF bearing failure analysis, CLS preparation training, Motion Amplification, as well as several on-the-job-trainings with energy efficiency measuring, borescope inspections, mechanical seals, mist systems, etc. These trainings were taught by experts in their fields. My preferred learning style is to self-teach or have personalized discussions with specialists. I love reading technical papers, owner’s manuals and published articles. And I know the value of connecting with field experts at different companies and asking them to share their knowledge on something they are truly specialists in.

Q: What’s a normal workday like for you?

A: The majority of my day involves answering questions and solving problems, and my goal is always to help people improve their processes. Customers are troubleshooting issues or trying to understand requirements for a machine, and I am helping them with those needs. These are usually related to reliability or lubricant usage.

Q: How does your company view machinery lubrication in terms of importance and overall business strategy?

A: Lubrication is the lifeblood of the equipment. It is one of the building blocks to optimizing equipment life and performance that will directly affect the bottom line. There are many cases that warrant the need for a flagship lubricant, but proper lubrication is determined more by oil analysis, lubrication frequency, vibration analysis, and then doing what is right for the equipment and the plant as a whole.

Q: What do you see as some of the more important trends taking place in the lubrication and oil analysis field? 

A: In the lubrication world: improved efficiency gains and extended oil life or even recovery and reuse. In the oil analysis world: improved varnish detection, real-time oil analysis and real-time asset management where oil analysis can generate work orders based on programming alert limits.