The Condition Monitoring discipline involves monitoring an asset to identify any significant change in that asset or its components (for example heat, noise, vibration) which signals a potential defect that may impact that assets remaining useful life.

The goal of Condition Monitoring is to fully understand the actual condition of all critical assets and advise on maintenance/correction work prior to the loss of equipment function and the potential for loss of production.

Condition monitoring is a valuable tool in a reliability defect elimination program.

Condition Monitoring has direct and indirect savings to industry including:

• When companies improve reliability safety is improved. This is by reducing the number of maintenance tasks and emergency work, resulting in less exposure time.
• Assets that fail cost more to repair than assets that are managed via a Condition Based Maintenance program (CBM).
• There are many other opportunities to reduce costs but they all rely on improving reliability and performing maintenance based on the condition of the asset. This then leads to a defect elimination program.

Integrated Condition Monitoring Technologies.

Here are some ‘Pearls of Wisdom’ to consider when setting up a program and working with customers within your external or internal business:

1. The most important part of any program is the person performing the data collection and analysis.
2. The second most important part of any program is the training given to the person selected.
3. 5 years of experience is not the same as 1 year of experience 5 times.
4. The most important question you can ever ask is “why”.
5. It is important to understand the values of the numbers you are using.
6. Physics of the machine is really important.
7. You can’t analyse what you don’t know or understand.
8. A person may not be stupid, they may just not understand what you are saying.
9. 1 times RPM is not always imbalance.
10. There are no universal vibration severity limits.
11. Absolute amplitude in the frequency domain is relatively useless. Don’t forget the time domain & phase.
12. There are no ghost frequencies or unknown frequencies but only frequencies not enough analysed.
13. Don’t ignore the potential benefits of chit chat in the crib/break room with the operators and maintenance teams. They know their machines!
14. When all else fails, leave the air conditioning, and go examine the operating equipment. Go look, touch, feel, smell and listen to the machinery.