Decisions: when to use a handheld tool or a sensor
Plant managers today must determine when to use condition monitoring (CdM) technologies and when to use traditional preventive maintenance (PM).
Frederic Baudart, CMRP, lead product specialist for Fluke, and Greg Perry, senior maintenance reliability consultant with Fluke Accelix, dive into this subject in this article featured on Plant Engineering.
They say the answer depends on each maintenance program’s reliability and maintenance journey. It is helpful to understand the difference between preventive maintenance (PM) and predictive maintenance (PdM). CdM, a subset of PdM, monitors and evaluates asset health in real time against performance parameters.
To determine which assets should be monitored with sensors, the first step is to rank assets by criticality to the operation. Deciding when to rely on handheld test tools and when to apply wireless sensors is specific to each plant—age of equipment, problem assets, and available resources should be considered.
This infographic compares vibration tools vs. sensors providing a breakdown of the following: cost (per/unit), cost (scale), route-based, portable, continuous monitoring, ease of use and connectivity to EAM/CMMS. This shows that, ultimately, both technologies have a place in most plants. In addition, combining this technology with a computerized maintenance management software (CMMS) system will provide the best results.
Read the full article on Plant Engineering, and check out this infographic to gain a detailed look at how predictive maintenance and vibration screening could benefit you.
