Predictive Maintenance Program

This chapter gives a complete overview of the predictive maintenance program. Predictive maintenance is monitoring the vibration of rotating machinery in an attempt to detect incipient problems and prevent catastrophic failure. The common premise of predictive maintenance is that regular monitoring of the actual crafts condition, operating efficiency, and other indicators of operating condition of machine trains and process systems provide the data required to ensure the maximum interval between repairs and minimize the number and cost of unscheduled outages created by machine train failures. It is the means of improving productivity, product quality, and overall effectiveness of manufacturing and production plants. A comprehensive predictive maintenance management program uses a combination of the most cost effective tools, that is, vibration monitoring, thermography, tribology, and the like, to obtain the actual operating condition of critical plant systems and, based on this actual data, schedules all maintenance activities on an “as needed” basis. Predictive maintenance using vibration signature analysis is predicated on two basic facts: all common failure modes have distinct vibration frequency components that can be isolated and identified and the amplitude of each distinct vibration component remains constant unless there is a change in the operating dynamics of the machine train. A wide variety of predictive techniques and technologies may provide benefit to a facility or plant. In most cases, more than one is needed for complete coverage of all critical assets and to gain maximum benefits from their use. In addition the chapter explains setting up a preventive/predictive maintenance program, visual inspection, vibration analysis, and many more concepts.