Condition-Based Maintenance represents a change in the way maintenance tasks are driven. No longer do work orders get pushed out just because an approved amount of time has lapsed since the last maintenance task. By the very definition of the acronym, call to action in a CBM environment dictates that we manage maintenance in response to changes observed from condition-based indicators. If this is indeed fact, then in order to observe a change in condition we must have a reference to measure condition against, and technologies that compare similar machines to each other in order to identify their differences. This is the point along our CBM journey where we meet the Condition Monitoring (CM) of CBM.
Implementing CM into your CBM strategy is not a task to be taken without careful and thoughtful planning. Like your CBM journey, that first perilous step must not be reckless.
A good starting place is to draw a list of the small day-to-day problems that continually erode productivity and profitability. There are things that bite you hard every hour of every day and cost you more money in the long run.
The problem is that most of those problems are now almost invisible to the business – they are just considered the cost of living. Some examples:
"Is it okay?" must be at the heart of your CBM program. Answering this question is what your first-line data collection should be about. There are many cases in a plant, both in terms of rotating and non-rotating assets, where ultrasound does answer this question better than most other tools.
Download our article posted through Uptime Magazine on the right to understand how best to approach Ultrasound Testing.
As published in UpTime Magazine.