Condition Based-Monitoring and Assessment

Understanding the condition of an asset is important for three key reasons. First, from a reliability perspective, predicting an imminent failure allows you time to plan to make repairs, which is the most common reason given for implementing a condition based-monitoring or predictive maintenance (PDM) program. A second reason, is to maximize the time between repair actions so that instead of make a repair at some regular interval to prevent failures, the repairs are made On-Condition detection, i.e. a lubrication is only replaced when a failure condition is detected rather then on OEM prescribed frequency. The third reason is to understand expected life of your equipment, which means you need to have a good understanding of the current condition to project the life you expect. Since municipal water and wastewater assets tend to have a lot of built in redundancy, a PDM program that is intended to predict failures becomes much less valuable, however, the ability to extend repair frequency and to identify wear related components that you can track and trend to project expected life can both have a significant impact on reducing the life-cycle cost of an asset and aid in planning capital investment.

So, if improving reliability, extending preventive replacement frequencies, and understanding the condition of your assets is valuable, then where would be the best place to start a program? I recently came across a ReliabilityWeb.com recorded training webinar on Condition Based Monitoring and how it should be used to achieve the desired reliability results. You can find the training here:

http://www.rcm-1.com/forms/intro_cbm_reg.htm

This training is provided free with a sign-up for email list and it is a full 2 hours, best for engineers, maintenance supervisors, and decision makers.

There were several important points made in the presentation, including a great review of a condition based-monitoring workflow that really explains how the program can work with your current preventive maintenance program your OEM's have suggested. However, what really caught my attention was the following graphic, which I snatched from the presentation, that was used to demonstrate which condition monitoring technologies should be applied and to what level of asset coverage will yield valuable results.





This diagram shows that to achieve value, your condition based-monitoring or PDM program should apply a full range of PdM technologies to 25% of your most critical assets. From an asset organizational perspective, this means that you need to know two things, what type of assets you have so you can apply the appropriate technologies(Please see this article on code sets include equipment categories or asset types for CMMS: http://www.plantengineering.com/article/CA442871.html), and which assets are most critical (Here is short introduction to criticality Here is short introduction to criticality). These steps should be taken before you begin your condition based-monitoring program. With proper application of PDM technologies, a program designed to provide PM frequency analysis and life-cycle projection, and applying to the most critical assets a condition based-monitoring program great deal of value can be gained from a PdM program.

If you would be interested in signing up for live training on condition-based monitoring you could check out http://www.petroskills.com/courseDetails.aspx?courseID=799.