Overview:
The overwhelming trend in maintenance is moving away from costly reactive maintenance and making the leap to one of the three P’s: Preventative, Predictive or Prescriptive maintenance.
Scheduling someone to inspect assets on a routine basis – whether it’s once a day, once a week or even once a month - is very costly and, in most cases, inadequate. In addition to traditional CMMS features, a more evolved solution leverages the Internet of Things (IoT) to collect data through wireless sensors.
Today, the cost of the internet-enabled sensors needed to monitor critical information is far more economical than using human resources to conduct routine inspections. A sensor can continuously monitor asset health, such as the temperature and current draw, every minute instead of sending a person to check on it once a week. Plus, this approach is much more effective, as it catches small problems before they escalate into bigger, more expensive problems. This forward-thinking approach empowers people to solve problems before they escalate, streamlines the troubleshooting process, prevents unscheduled downtime and has saved significant dollars.
This whitepaper takes a deeper dive into the current state of Internet of Things technology and condition monitoring. It will demystify common challenges, solutions and cost savings realized when evolving from reactive maintenance to an IoT maintenance technology solution.
Evolution of Maintenance: The Four Stages
No matter what your facility – manufacturing, residential, commercial, government facility, etc. – the philosophical approach to maintenance falls within one of these four categories:
Here are the basic definitions of each:
Reactive Maintenance (Breakdown or Run-to-Failure Maintenance)
The basic philosophy:
This maintenance philosophy is most common in manufacturing plants that are under staffed and unable to retain knowledgeable maintenance personnel. Manufacturing plants have struggled for many years to get away from this maintenance philosophy as it is very expensive and often results in significant unplanned downtime and increased energy costs.
Preventive Maintenance (Time-Based Maintenance)
The basic philosophy
Implementing a preventive maintenance program is the first step in the evolution of maintenance for most manufacturing plants.
Preventive Maintenance requires regularly scheduled inspections of assets and routine replacement of wear items and parts based on a set frequency.
To move from reactive maintenance to preventive maintenance, the first thing that is needed is a way to manage, plan and schedule maintenance activities. Typically, this has been done by implementing a CMMS system or Computerized Maintenance Management Software.
Predictive Maintenance (Condition-Based Maintenance)
The basic philosophy
Predictive maintenance uses condition information such as temperature, vibration, and general wear measurement to predict when maintenance is required. The information is routinely collected over time and analyzed to detect unhealthy trends as they start to develop.
When conditions start to deteriorate or reach an unhealthy level, maintenance can be planned and coordinated so that it has the least impact on production. Also, additional cost savings come from only replacing parts when they truly reach end of life as opposed to preventive maintenance which calls for wear items to be replaced solely on a calendar basis.
Prescriptive Maintenance (Using available data to “Prescribe” corrective actions)
The basic philosophy
procedures.
This philosophy is the next big step forward in the evolution of maintenance. This means moving from planned preventive maintenance to a state where required maintenance is predicted by systems and a course of action is prescribed.
One of the biggest challenges faced today is finding qualified and knowledgeable technicians. The most skilled maintenance workers are nearing retirement age, and their decades of experience is lost upon their departure. Prescriptive maintenance helps bridge this gap by gathering and analyzing data and providing recommended next steps. Through this method, systems can notify people when problems arise AND can suggest corrective actions and recommended troubleshooting procedures to quickly address any issues. Plus, users can access historical data on equipment.
Getting to Predictive and Prescriptive Maintenance
Today, most maintenance departments have a reactive maintenance philosophy. While many manufacturing plants have some form of PM system in place, the procedures are lacking and generally not well followed. PM procedures run the spectrum, ranging from “Go check the machine” to extremely complex procedures which triple the time necessary to complete the job.
While Preventive maintenance is effective, it is not the most efficient solution available because it requires:
Even given these shortcomings, it is possible to evolve directly from Reactive or Preventive to Predictive and ultimately Prescriptive maintenance.
The key to this evolutionary step is automated condition monitoring of your assets and having a system in place to manage this information. Software such as an APM (Asset Performance Management) System can continuously collect and analyze condition monitoring information for you.
APM software can gather critical information from existing PLCs and SCADA systems as well as gathering information from wireless sensors that can be added to older equipment.
Instead of checking the equipment once a week or once a month with traditional PM routines and inspections, the equipment will be monitored 24/7 automatically, and reporting its current condition every minute, and sending alerts and recommended next steps at the first sign of trouble.
How to Make the Leap to Predictive and Prescriptive Maintenance
There is an easy, turn key solution that empowers the evolutionary leap to Predictive and Prescriptive maintenance. Instead of becoming paralyzed trying to determine what symptoms indicate asset health, focus on the three most common indicators of asset health.
Focusing on three key indicators makes it easy to monitor asset health. The SOMAX APM system makes it even easier by using wireless sensors to monitor:
These three symptoms have proven to be the biggest indicators of asset health. SOMAX offers a database of recommended operating parameters for temperature, amperage and moisture for critical equipment types, along with troubleshooting and corrective actions. The minute an asset falls above or below the healthy threshold for one of these symptoms, a real-time notification and work order is created instantly, including step-by-step instructions on how to respond.
HOW TO GET STARTED:
Here are step-by-step recommendations on how to get up-and-running with an internet-enabled sensor, using a temperature sensor as an example:
A Quick Example:
A low-cost, internet-enabled temperature sensor can be placed on critical motors and gearboxes. Using condition monitoring as part of an APM system to monitor the health of an asset, a higher-than-normal temperature can indicate any of the following problems: 
When the temperature exceeds a healthy threshold, the internet-enabled sensor will instantly notify maintenance personnel and generate a work order that includes recommended next steps for troubleshooting the problem.
This empowers employees to act quickly, rather than just waiting for a routine PM inspection or bigger symptoms (and more damage) to flare up. After the problem has been resolved, the incident and the solution will become part of the maintenance history within the SOMAX software, making it easier to identify patterns and potential fail points.
