Predictive maintenance is a task used to determine the current status of some form of deterioration and how close a deteriorated element is to failure. There are a number of forms of predictive maintenance and their effectiveness varies based on a variety of issues. When assessing the effectiveness of predictive maintenance, ask yourself:

• What is the predictive maintenance measuring?
• Is it directly measuring the form of deterioration that most commonly results in the failure of the device?
• Or is it measuring some behavior that occurs as a secondary result of the deterioration?
• Is the response that should be taken as a result of various predictive maintenance measurements clearly defined?

Tip from “Critical Connections” by Daniel Daley