Can Equipment Failure Modes Support the Use of a Condition Based Maintenance Strategy?

Over recent years, the importance of maintenance, and therefore maintenance management within manufacturing organizations has grown. This is a result of increasing pressure upon manufacturing organizations to meet customer and corporate demands, and equipment availability and performance is central to achieving these. Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) is widely accepted and used as a financially effective maintenance strategy. The economic benefit of CBM is achieved if the tools and techniques associated with CBM are applied to the right equipment. In particular the degradation behavior of the equipment needs to be understood. Understanding of degradation is strongly related with failure models However, very little is known or published about the importance and the role of various failure models. Thus, if failure models are not analyses and understood the use of CBM could be directed to the wrong equipment and therefore achieve incorrect and expensive results. The paper examines the relationship between the failure patterns observed in industrial maintenance practice and the corresponding impact on adoption and potential benefits of Condition-Based Maintenance (CBM). The paper will explain the need for accurate and up to date equipment information to support the correct maintenance approach. The paper suggests the importance of further supporting such investments by appropriately addressing the need to collect relevant data as a basis upon which to make the right decisions.