Ad-hoc to best-practice - the roadmap to achieving best-practice management of condition monitoring data

Abstract

It is widely accepted that predictive maintenance is an essential component of an effective maintenance program. As organisations increase the quantity of predictive maintenance, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage the huge volumes of data generated through the various condition monitoring techniques from potentially many different sources. There are many shortcomings with the status quo, whereby condition monitoring reports are organised using a manual or electronic filing system. Many organisations struggle to make this information easily available across their organisation. Reports can be difficult to find and searching through these reports is often a time consuming manual process. Collecting the data from various condition monitoring techniques for a particular asset can involve manually searching through many filing systems. Seeing the 'bigger picture' of overall plant health is virtually impossible. While modern Computerised Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) are more than capable of managing the maintenance program, they are not ideally suited to managing high volumes of condition monitoring data. The absence of a suitable information system is often a barrier in the transition from status quo to best-practice. Short term benefits are immediately realised when organisations adopt a best-practice approach to condition monitoring data management. An instantly accessible and exhaustive condition monitoring history for each asset is available, enabling the most informed maintenance decisions to be made. Potential problem areas are communicated to the relevant personnel immediately and overall plant health can be easily determined at any point in time. Over the longer term, these organisations are able to extract an extra layer of value from their condition monitoring data management systems. This may include benchmarking the health of similar assets across the organisation as well as identifying both effective and ineffective maintenance practices. In this paper the author outlines the features and benefits that a best-practice condition monitoring data management system should provide. The people, processes and information systems required for bestpractice are discussed in detail. Finally, the author suggests a roadmap that can be followed by those organisations wishing to achieve best-practice data management. Potential challenges that may arise are identified to allow risks to be managed through the implementation process.