The sheer number of infographics in the condition monitoring field is staggering; they show up on social media, and in conference presentations, whitepapers, websites and books. Infographics are effective at helping people comprehend difficult concepts that integrate an array of variables and factors.

My soon-to-be-published book, “Inspection 2.0,” covers a host of different condition monitoring methods, including sensory inspections. I was looking for an infographic to illustrate failure modes and detection methods in the time domain for different types of machines and applications but was unable to find a graphic that fit my needs.

Necessity is the mother of invention. Left without choices, I decided to construct my own graphic, naming it Condition Alarm Mapping (CAM). The final product is shown in the figures on the following pages. However, the number of variations and uses of the CAM graphic is extensive and goes far beyond the scope of this article. As an introduction, I can show and describe what it is, why it is needed, and how it is used.

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Inspection, in its most basic form, has been around forever. However, like most things in life, what you get out of an activity depends entirely on what you put in. This column is about radical reinvention of the whole concept of machine inspection. It has little to do with conventional practices of doing daily machine rounds.

With Inspection 2.0, you don’t just “look” at a bearing, seal, coupling or pump. Instead, you “examine” these components with a keen and probing eye. Inspection 2.0 is intense and purposeful. It seeks to penetrate and extract information from what’s been referred to as machine sign language. Inspection 2.0 requires polished linguistic skills to translate this sign language into prescribed activities and instructions that stabilize reliability.

The technologies of machine condition monitoring have been advancing at a near break-neck pace in recent years. These innovations will continue for decades to come. Still, for the vast majority of machines, there is currently no fault-detecting technology more effective than the razor-sharp and relentless focus of a human being.

The potential of a human being as a condition monitoring instrument is enormous. This potential depends on transformation, specifically from the going-through-​the-motions inspections of the past to mission-intensive detective work inspections of the future. That is the essence of Inspection 2.0.

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I have written several articles on inspection recently, as I strongly believe it is foundational to condition monitoring, machine reliability and asset management. My last Machinery Lubrication column introduced the term “Inspection 2.0” to differentiate conventional inspection practices from the intense, probing and purposeful methods needed to optimize benefits. As common as inspection activities may be in any plant, Inspection 2.0 is largely untapped in my opinion. In fact, it is delusional to imagine world-class reliability without the coexistence of world-class inspection.

Inspection 2.0 borrows from many battle-tested philosophies, including the practice of autonomous maintenance advanced by total productive maintenance (TPM) doctrine. However, not detailed in these philosophies is the “how-to” to move an organization past the inspection status quo to the real game-changing opportunity that eludes their view. I plan to address these differences and the “how-to” tactics in several upcoming Machinery Lubrication articles.

This article introduces the concept of machine readiness as a critical enabler to Inspection 2.0. An inspector who is eager to determine the state of machine health – good or bad – needs help from the machine. What hurts, where does it hurt and what are the symptoms of being hurt? Information exchange, like basic communication, is a two-way street. There is a need to enhance the quality of machine-transmitted conditions so the inspector gets a clear and complete picture of the state of the machine’s health.

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Condition monitoring should never be limited to a single technology or method. Instead, it should combine and integrate an optimum selection of purposeful tools and tasks. Condition monitoring can be largely technology based but can also be observation or inspection based.

Most machines share condition monitoring and inspection needs with many other types of equipment. This is because they have components and operating conditions in common, i.e., motors, bearings, seals, lubricants, couplings, etc. At the same time, their operating conditions and applications may demand unique inspection requirements. These influence failure modes and machine criticality.

As discussed in previous columns, inspection should be viewed with the same serious intent as other condition monitoring practices. In my opinion, a world-class inspection program should produce more “saves” than all other condition monitoring activities combined. It’s not an alternative to technology-based condition monitoring but rather a strategic and powerful companion.

The technologies of infrared thermography, analytical ferrography, vibration analysis, motor current and acoustic emission are generally used to detect active faults and abnormal wear. Conversely, a well-conceived inspection program should largely focus on root causes and incipient (very early stage) failure conditions. Detection of advanced wear and impending failure is secondary.

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The well-known KISS principle (keep it simple stupid) was first coined in the 1960s and began widespread use in the U.S. Navy shortly thereafter. While it started as a design principle for engineers, it has since been applied to any activity or creative endeavor that has had the propensity to become unnecessarily complicated.

What becomes overly complicated also becomes, by default, poorly understood and sparsely used. Conversely, the greater genius in design and engineering lies in achieving the design objective through simplicity and pureness of form.

This can be applied to the world of oil analysis in many ways. Increasingly, oil analysis has become engulfed by complex analytical chemistry and mathematical algorithms. This science is successful when it takes the complicated, such as an array of particles of varying shapes, sizes, textures, colors and compositions, and puts their formation into plain English (e.g., cutting wear on cylinder walls).

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It is no surprise that those who enter the maintenance field are mechanics at heart. These are people who possess a native love for machinery and the thrill that comes from making broken things run again. Those of us who lack mechanical aptitude have great appreciation for the craftsman who instinctively knows just where the problem is and how to fix it.

Yet today’s reliability-conscious world is changing the maintenance persona, taking it in a direction away from the macho image of the past. It’s no longer politically correct to yearn for the meltdown or the perfect storm. Fading too is the sense of pride that came with going into battle, wrench in hand, to press the limits of one’s mechanical proficiency. Perhaps a sad reality to some, but a reality nonetheless.

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Inspection 2.0 is rooted in some of the most fundamental and time-honored maintenance principles. One of them is total productive maintenance (TPM). Today, it’s hard to play an active role in the field of maintenance and reliability without encountering and embracing TPM. Honestly, it is delusional to think otherwise.

World-class maintenance organizations understand the intrinsic value of a well-tuned and culture-driven TPM program. World-class TPM programs are fundamentally powered by keen observation. You can’t fix what you can’t see. Therefore, all progress hinges on the power of observation. Allowing you to see is the bedrock. Improve the quality of inspection and, by default, you improve the quality of TPM and all the benefits that TPM seeks to achieve. It’s that simple!

The origin of TPM can be traced back to the Japanese automobile industry in the 1960s. It has many similar elements to the quality movement that was advanced in Japan during the same period. However, it wasn’t until 1988 that the western world learned of TPM when two seminal English texts were published on the subject by Seiichi Nakajima. From that point, TPM spread across the vast global maintenance and reliability landscape.

TPM has similarities and overlapping features with other branded maintenance philosophies, including reliability-centered maintenance (RCM), condition-based maintenance (CBM) and asset management (see Figure 1). However, its strongest difference is the active and responsible role of machine operators and small groups toward maintenance prevention and improved asset utilization.

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Condition monitoring can be easily performed by following a few simple principles. Among these principles include monitoring two sets of conditions:

1. The operating and environmental conditions that precede failure, and
2. Early-stage failure symptoms

Several models are presented that show the benefits of monitoring machine conditions, as well as the consequences of ignoring them . Also discussed is the integration of both proactive and predictive maintenance techniques to extend machine life.

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By some estimates, condition monitoring has been around for more than a century, but it is only within the last 5-10 years (and particularly the last 2 or 3) that interest has been at fever pitch. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of companies are involved in manufacturing or selling services or equipment for lubricant analysis, wear metals analysis, and vibration analysis, any and all of which can be part of a condition monitoring program. Within the realm of oil analysis itself are many types of tests that can be performed and many instruments that can be used to measure factors of interest. What distinguishes condition monitoring from other uses of oil analysis is not so much the specific techniques used as it is the repeated performance of testing and (most important) the tracking and trending of the results to determine changes in the health of an equipment-lube system over time. Using this information, the practitioner can take proactive measures to avert damage and downtime, saving money, time, and resources.

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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.

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Oil analysis is about surfacing problems that were otherwise hidden from view. We’ve all heard the phrase “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it,” but an important corollary is “if it is broke, fix it fast.” The basic problem with this strategy is not knowing when something is actually broken.

For many organizations, oil analysis offers an effective solution, but it works only if users are literate in its language and apply it effectively. While oil analysis is not a panacea for all machine reliability problems, it does offer many special opportunities. For one, the oil is typically the carrier of both the root cause and symptoms of impending failures.

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Indeed it’s hard to justify spending time and money on things that aren’t yet broken when your maintenance staff is hog-tied, fixing the things that have broken. When breakdowns occur… well, you know the drill… not much else gets done until things are up and running again.

Let’s face it, breakdown maintenance is just plain unruly. It’s defiant, won’t conform to a schedule, and belies the budget. Breakdown maintenance is destructive and wasteful. It highjacks precious manpower and robs resource-limited organizations of operating capital. And worst of all, it has an obscene sense of timing.

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The field of maintenance technology is going through a revolution of change. Gone are the days when a machine had a predictable service life, after which it was replaced, continuing the cycle. Today machinery and equipment can be maintained to achieve useful operating lives many times that attainable just a few years ago. It is no longer a truism that all machines are built to fail. Why? Because there is an increasing understanding of the causes of failure, and, armed with this information, it is possible to prevent the initiation of failure proactively. The field of proactive maintenance targets this very objective.

When maintenance is performed in response to failure it is called breakdown maintenance. When maintenance is performed according to a schedule it is called preventive maintenance. When maintenance is performed in response to a detected impending failure it is called predictive maintenance. When maintenance is performed in response to detected conditions that avoid the onset of failure (by correcting the conditions) it is called proactive maintenance.

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