Ever feel like a fool for getting the oil in your car changed every 3,000 miles? Car repair insiders have long known this classic preventive maintenance measure is not strictly necessary and so can be a waste of time and money. Much more relevant to the question of whether the oil needs to be changed is how it looks and feels. This shift in perspective from scheduled prevention to condition is now taking the world of industrial equipment maintenance by storm, even playing a role in manufacturers' strategies for going green.
"Manufacturers are getting involved in predictive, condition-based maintenance, taking readings more often and having them automatically generated and the results sent to the [enterprise asset management (EAM)] system automatically to generate work orders," says Bruce Kopkin, senior director of global industry solutions for Ventyx Inc. (formerly Indus). The Ventyx Asset Suite EAM system has industry-standard connectors into the condition-based monitoring tools that can be used to send reports and automatically generate work orders.
Wireless machine-to-machine (M2M) sensors are also driving down the cost of condition-based monitoring (CBM), removing the need to connect devices to be monitored with expensive cable.
"As these features become less expensive and more sophisticated, the maintenance people are recognizing the value of predictive maintenance. Preventive maintenance is not as cost-effective," Kopkin says.