By Jim Fitch
Machinery Lubrication Magazine
When most of us refer to inspection, we are thinking of running machines inspected routinely, say on daily rounds. Unarguably, this type of on-the-run inspection is critical to machine condition monitoring, but other types of inspections are important as well.
At its best, inspection seeks and finds the “precursors” to failure, also known as root causes. This is job one, for sure. Next, inspection must hunt down those elusive incipient failure conditions (the earliest detectable state) that can be as difficult as the sound of a “pin drop” for our senses to detect.
The time horizon when inspection should incur spans from cradle to grave. I’ve emphasized in past columns that Inspection 2.0 is a continuous state of vigilance.
The moment you let your guard down is exactly the time when the enduring Mr. Murphy makes his entrance. To fend off risk and vulnerability, the wise and reliability-intensive organization performs inspection across multiple states.