Condition monitoring to help prevent machine failure

Condition monitoring is the process of monitoring machinery – by vibration, temperature or other methods – to identify a significant change which could indicate a developing fault. It is a major component of predictive maintenance.

The use of condition monitoring allows maintenance to be scheduled, or other actions to be taken to prevent failure and avoid its consequences.

Maintenance engineers should be well aware of the three main maintenance techniques:

• Proactive Maintenance – maintaining the machine before failure occurs.
• Predictive Maintenance – monitoring the condition of the machine and predicting failure early.
• Reactive Maintenance – maintaining the machine once failure occurs.

Our qualified engineers at Sharjah Oman Engginering can assist with all the above. We understand that certain machinery and processes require various types of maintenance.

Consider a desk cooling fan. This is not a critical to the running of your process and may take just minutes to replace, so reactive maintenance would probably be the most effective technique.

On the other hand, the failure of a main motor on a steel production line could be dangerous, lose you production and time – and be very expensive to repair. In this case, predictive maintenance would probably be the most effective technique.

A summary of what we believe to be the Pros and Cons of each technique.

PROACTIVE MAINTENANCE

Pros	Cons
High reliability of machines	High cost in parts and labour
Minimised chance of unplanned downtime	Can easily disrupt production time
Minimised unexpected costs	-

PREDICTIVE MAINTENANCE

Pros	Cons
Low cost preventative maintenance solution	Ongoing small cost instalments
Minimised cost of repair	-
Minimised risk of additional damage occurring	-

REACTIVE MAINTENANCE

Pros	Cons
No cost until failure	More likely to be an expensive repair
-	More likely to result in longer downtime
-	Unpredictable downtime
-	Maximised chance of unexpected cost