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.

Asset-intensive vertical industries, such as power generation and railways, have long invested in advanced EAM techniques, such as CBM and reliability-centered maintenance (RCM), where there is a critical need to get the most performance out of assets. "Predictive maintenance saves you from doing maintenance you don't have to do," says Alison Smith, senior analyst for AMR Research. "It saves you from a lot of the firefighting. [The equipment] will tell you when it needs attention."

Now, the trend is widening to include the automotive and consumer-packaged goods industries, where there is a need to do more with less and reduce waste to as near zero as possible. These verticals have made great strides thanks to lean processes and Six Sigma. Moving to a scheme that emphasizes maintenance when needed in near-real time rather than on a metered basis fits right in with the waste-not, want-not philosophy.

"You're elevating the role the human plays, which is problem solving, rather than wasting time taking the data. The people can figure out how to fix it," Smith says.

Whereas CBM was invented in heavy-duty process industries such as oil & gas, the discrete verticals are beginning to get into it, according to Kopkin. Automotive supplier Johnson Controls Inc., a Ventyx customer, uses "smart" condition monitoring that generates reports on the overall health of the network as well as each individual piece of equipment used. Another Ventyx customer, Heidelberg USA, Inc., monitors every part on its huge printing presses.

A Greener Approach

Reliability- or condition-centric maintenance arguably reduces environmental impact, as well, making it an important part of a manufacturer's green strategy.