As studies and experiences show, a successful Predictive Maintenance (PdM) Program consists of 4 key elements: Detection, Analysis, Correction, and Verification.
To ensure complete success with your PdM Program, be sure that all elements are given due consideration and that they are addressed in a logical manner.
Oftentimes, maintenance technicians get pushed with production schedules and make the mistake of jumping into a corrective balancing job with little machine data and analysis only to find out in verification that things are not much better.In rare situations, sometimes things are even worse!
Before going right to a balancing job, it is very important to spend enough time in the first 2 phases (Detection and Analysis) to ensure that a 1X contribution is really there and that it makes up about 80% of the overall vibration level. Also, it is important to run a few checks to ensure that any structure looseness or machine resonance conditions have been detected and corrected. It is also important to eliminate any other possible machine condition issues like misalignment or bearing wear.
Without performing the due diligence on the front-end of the process, trying to maintain machinery by correcting an issue that is not the fundamental problem can be quite frustrating and somewhat embarrassing. In fact, missed calls and undertaking unnecessary corrective measures can be detrimental to the life of the PdM Program itself.
As an analogy, it is much like trying to inspect quality into a manufacturing process. It just doesn't work!
The key points for emphasis here are:
- take ample time and to know the machine make-up,
- take adequate and good quality data,
- analyze the data relative to possible faults,
- take corrective actions, and finally,
- verify the results with a definitive before and after assessment using charts and reports.
Tip provided by: Dennis Shreve, Support Engineer, Commtest, Inc.
