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Implementing PdM Within Your Reliability Process

Here are two myths:

1. “Implementing predictive maintenance (PdM) is difficult, complicated and expensive”, and
2. “Our company cannot even consider predictive maintenance before we have control of our preventive maintenance efforts”.

Neither statement is true. Regarding statement "A", implementing PdM is as simple as steps 1-15 below. Regarding statement "B", many preventive maintenance programs struggle because of a lack of good information. Predictive maintenance provides targeted information so managers can most effectively schedule their limited resources.

Please use the steps below to plan your own implementation project.

How to Implement PdM Within Your Reliability and Maintenance Process:

1. Identify and quantify the opportunity
2. Define the scope of the process and implementation project
   1. Geographic locations
   2. Organizational units (areas, business units, departments)
   3. Products
3. Collate the list of assets that comprise your companies machines or equipment within the scope of the program
4. Assess the criticality of the assets
5. Align asset failure modes to predictive technologies best suited for identifying potential failures; consider:
1. Asset
2. Failure modes
3. Technology best suited to identify failure mode
4. Criticality of asset
6. Plan PdM integration with the existing maintenance management process
   1. Data collection techniques
   1. Route-based monitoring
   2. Static dedicated monitoring
   3. Intelligent dedicated monitoring
   2. Data analysis
      1. Rule-based screening
      2. Full data analysis
      3. Hybrid analysis
   3. Information reporting and management
      1. Receiving information
      2. Invoking action
      3. CMMS integration
      4. Action follow-up, verification and escalation
7. Develop internal / procure external predictive maintenance expertise
8. Develop data collection plans (remote, onsite, both)
9. Procure and install (as required) monitoring equipment
10. Establish measurable process objectives (overall but may include local measures also; typical objectives focus on scheduling targets, asset availability due to avoidable problems, ROA)
11. Validate measuring system(s) for collecting process performance data
12. Schedule PdM data collection and analysis
13. Collect PdM data
14. Analyze PdM data
15. Report information ensuring individuals with appropriate responsibilities and authorities are notified
16. Take preventive and corrective action, including verification of action effectiveness
17. Review overall process effectiveness (correlate to measurable objectives in #10)
18. For ineffective processes or where opportunities for improvement exist, go to step 5, otherwise, go to step 12

If you would like guidance, please contact ITR and we will assist you with steps 1-7 at no charge. Expect your predictive maintenance program to return at least 5:1 (state-of-the-art programs return >20:1) of your investment. In-house programs generally have lower ROI ratios than outsourced programs because there is far more overhead, on-going technology investment and staff turnover. However, for some organizations in-house programs offer less tangible advantages that are very important to management.

Because every organization is different, ITR encourages all PdM program managers to assess all options carefully.