What is Predictive Maintenance Based on Condition?

Condition-based Predictive Maintenance (CBM) is a type of management that proposes repair or replacement solutions on the current or future condition of the machinery. Thanks to this type of maintenance we can have the most objective data about the machinery, being able to identify possible errors or possible machine failures before they happen and allowing us to anticipate them. This is possible thanks to a continuous analysis and prolonged in time, which allows us to see the variations or drastic changes in the operation of the machine and that can mean a future error, or a turning point in the operation of the system.

One of the keys to perform a correct Predictive Maintenance based on the condition, is to maintain a permanent monitoring that provides us with accurate and constant information that we use as a source to detect potential abnormalities and thus be able to conduct a study on when it is possible that the machinery can lower performance, and even detect when it will fail. All the information that we receive constantly provides us with an improved planning that allows us to optimize the processes, increasing energy efficiency and minimizing downtime, in a way that, otherwise, would have entailed work and additional costs. We can use enterprise asset management as our improved planning.

The fact of anticipating any change that the equipment may suffer makes the planning of maintenance work much shorter and more precise, reducing spare parts costs, downtime and also costs related to the time needed by technicians to repair the machine.

Advantages of Predictive Maintenance based on the Condition

Creating a maintenance philosophy based on Condition-based Predictive Maintenance allows us to achieve greater savings compared to traditional preventive maintenance techniques, since it allows us to optimize times and calculate when it is really necessary to stop the machines.

The main advantages that this type of maintenance provides us with are:

– Greater job security in the center / warehouse / plant.
– Longer equipment life.
– Reduction of the number of accidents.
– Reduction of repair time.
– Lower environmental impact
– It allows us to better optimize the resources we have available.

Through the condition based maintenance we can establish a defined control over the established parameters that we wish to obtain from any of the equipment from which we want to extract information. In order to obtain all this information flow continuously, the correct sensor installation is needed, establishing the key points where they will be located and defining which parameters to analyze.

Through continuous monitoring we can obtain a series of trends and performances through which we can see when the performance of the equipment can be reduced, and even at the moment in which they will fail.

Some of the functions that will allow us to integrate a Predictive Maintenance system based on the Condition are:

– Detection of possible gaps, ruptures or wear of the pieces.
– Identify the moment in which there will be a functional failure in the equipment, allowing us to anticipate it.
– Reduction of maintenance costs, both at the level of human and mechanical resources.
– Study the trends of machine performance peaks to produce accurate reports.

When carrying out this monitoring it is very important to define which parameters are the ones we want to study, and through which we will obtain the results to be analyzed. Although there are types of discontinuous monitoring (thermograph), the ideal is to perform a continuous monitoring. Some of the parameters to analyze within this continuous monitoring would be:

– Analysis of temperatures.
– Pressure analysis
– Vibration analysis.
– Fault analysis.
– Analysis of operational dynamics.

In short, it is a type of maintenance that is an investment that in the medium / long term can be very profitable and will also affect from the first moment to avoid possible problems of equipment productivity, avoid and anticipate failures critical, and have a full knowledge of what is happening throughout the process to have everything under control. The fact of being able to carry out trends and analysis according to the results is a determining factor that can provide us with infinite advantages.