Article first posted at Conscious Reliability by James Reyes-Picknell, Jesus Sifonte, and team.

Condition Monitoring – A Closer Look

By Jesús R. Sifonte

Condition Monitoring is a broad term referring to the systematic process of data collection for the evaluation of asset’s performance, reliability and maintenance needs with the purpose of planning repair works. Its main purpose is Potential Failures finding. It requires the collection of good asset’s health data which trending is studied. The primary advantage of Condition Monitoring is that it incorporates health indicator monitoring activities performed while the machine is operating. Assets failures are predicted well in advance of their occurrence. It allows for planning repairs safely and economically for the plant. Also, machine parameter data trending allows extending assets operation as close as possible to their actual useful life. Condition Monitoring data provides vital information for taking important decisions affecting plant operation goals. Maintenance decisions are taken based on the actual asset condition avoiding unnecessary repairs leading to start up failures. Catastrophic failures of a critical assets presenting accelerated wear trends can be avoided by using C tasks too. Sometimes operating conditions changes causing components life expectance to reduce as noted by steeper indicators trends leading to unexpected catastrophic failures. This can be detected by CM and earlier planned shutdowns can avoid such disasters.

Article first posted at Conscious Reliability by James Reyes-Picknell, Jesus Sifonte, and team.

Suppliers and users of any product want that it performs well during its lifetime. That is, the item must perform within specified operating parameters during its life cycle.  The life cycle of an item comprises Concept, Research & Development, Production, Operation & Maintenance and, Disposal phases. Each phase carry costs its owner wishes to minimize. The idea is to realize the most value from the item when the whole life cycle costs and benefits are considered. In most cases, usually 80% of the total costs are incurred during the operation & maintenance phase of the life cycle. Machine failures cause plants to stop production causing accidents, economic impacts and reputation loses.  Asset components gradual degradation with age, operational/maintenance errors and design flaws all can cause assets or processes to fail. A failed asset is considered unreliable, which means that it is no longer able to fulfill its intended function.