-
How the IIoT Is Changing Condition Monitoring
The industrial internet of things (IIoT) and Industry 4.0 are already unleashing enormous value in plants around the world. It seems that today’s younger, digital workforce is the energy that propels this change. Past efforts had been sluggish to say the least. Read More
-
Introducing Condition Alarm Mapping (CAM)
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. Read More
-
Why Inspection 2.0 Is Your Best Strategy for Early Fault Detection
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… Read More
-
Be Proactive to Avoid Root Cause Fault Bubbles
No warning or short-warning failures are the worst kind. Think of a tire. It can wear out slowly over thousands of driving miles or rupture suddenly, at full highway speed, from a random piece of road debris. You can monitor tread loss over time and conveniently schedule a tire change. Conversely, who could predict the… Read More
-
Getting Machines to the Proper State of Inspection Readiness
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… Read More
-
How to Visually Inspect the Health and State of Oil
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. Read More
-
Model of a Fuzzy Logic Expert System for Real-Time Condition Control of a Hydraulic System
Condition control is defined as the interactive processes of condition monitoring, condition analysis, and condition response. A model is presented which employs the use of expert systems to achieve real-time condition control of a hydraulic system. Read More
-
Optimizing Lubrication and Lubricant Analysis
Lubrication is an unmistakably integral part of machine reliability. Rotating machines are dependent on lubrication decisions made, such as which lubricant to use, how the lubricant needs to be applied to the tribological zones, and what is done during operations to monitor and control the integrity of these frictional zones. Read More
-
The Wrath of Unscheduled Downtime: Why Oil Analysis is a Wise and Effective Defense
There are 8,760 hours in a year. Few plants manage to produce at full capacity for all of those hours. Instead, there are periodic production stoppages due to tooling changes, product changes, scheduled PMs/inspections and unscheduled downtime (reliability issues). Every hour the plant’s assets aren’t utilized is an hour of lost revenue and profits. Read More
-
Detection Zone Coding for More Efficient Condition Monitoring
These days, reliability professionals are faced with diverse options related to technologies and methods to detect, troubleshoot and remediate problems. Figure 1 is a simple example of the available options to collect data and arrive at decisions regarding the health of machinery and machine components. Read More
-
Inspection 2.0: The Cornerstone of World-Class TPM
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. Read More
-
Interpreting Contaminant Analysis Trends into a Proactive and Predictive Maintenance Strategy
Condition monitoring can be easily performed by following a few simple principles. Among these principles include monitoring two sets of conditions: Read More
-
Measure by Measure [oil analysis in machine condition monitoring]
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. Read More
-
Proactive Maintenance is a Blueprint for Success
It can take just one breakdown of a critical machine to spin an entire plant into an immediate production halt. At this point, it is too late for the plant manager to do anything but call a service technician, then gasp for air while counting the lost production. Read More
-
The 5 States of Machine Inspection 2.0
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. Read More
-
Who Should Inspect Your Lubricated Machines?
Perhaps you’ve heard that machine reliability is everyone’s responsibility. In a general sense, this is very true and needed. We should all keep our eyes alert to issues, large and small. We should foster an inspection and proactive maintenance culture. Inspection is largely about relentless and purposeful sensory observation. Any competent and responsible person near… Read More
-
Oil Analysis Effectively Uncovers Hidden Problems
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. Read More
-
Oil Analysis—Choose Your Weapon
A number of months ago I was invited to participate in a planning meeting for re-engineering oil analysis at a large industrial plant. Shortly after taking my seat, introductory remarks were made by the superintendent of maintenance to set the stage for the work ahead. To my surprise we were told to develop a strategy… Read More
-
Proactive Maintenance Cleans Up on Predictive/Preventive Methods
According to major industries throughout the world, it’s time to throw out your old ideas on machine maintenance. The costsaving trend is toward a maintenance program that targets the root causes of machine wear and failure. Predictive and preventive methods are out: pro-active maintenance is in. Read More
-
Proactive Maintenance–A Cost Reduction Strategy
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 Iives many times more attainable than just a few years ago. Read More