Hi,
As promised, this second entry will discuss Machinery Health, or Condition Monitoring, describing a few basic principles.
First Machinery Health Monitoring is a subset of 'maintenance', where maintenance is defined as:
"Activities to preserve the functions of machinery, required by the machinery stakeholders, in a defined operating context".
Many people think that maintenance is about preserving machinery, this is unsatisfactory as the focus is too narrow. Modern expectations in society for machinery to be safe, non polluting to the environment and deliver a superior user experience means maintenance has to go beyond 'machinery preservation'. A machine does not necessarily have to be physically broken to be functionally failed.
Consider the maintenance requirements of a racing car, whilst it is being actively raced, compared with exactly the same car used in a museum (because its racing career was so successful). Would you think the functional requirements for the same car in completely different operating environments are going to be the same? If not, neither will the maintenance required, be the same. This point also illustrates that machinery operating contexts are vital in determining an optimal maintenance regime.
Who are the stakeholders? obsolete maintenance thinking would only include the user of the machinery (as in operator and maintainer) and perhaps the owner. This leaves out many other groups who may have a completely legitimate interest (because there is an impact on them) in the machinery. A prime example may be a members of the general public who until recently lived in close proximity to the Fukushima Nuclear plant? Stakeholders include The Government and regulators, as there is more and more legislation that applies to running and maintaining machinery. Financiers and insurers also have direct interests as do the customers who use the machinery (e.g. transport) or use the products from machinery (e.g. electricity).
One thing which may not be obvious, is what constitutes failure? failure to deliver comprehensive stakeholder functional requirements is functional failure, but at what level? stakeholders may differ (in terms of impact on them or their perception of risk of impact) in what functional failure actually is. When defining a maintenance regime, this must not be underestimated.
This will do for this entry. I will try and keep these short and sharp as I can. I am always interested in comments or feedback.
Regards - Charlie
