What is Condition-Based Predictive Maintenance?
Condition-based Predictive Maintenance (CBM) is a type of management that raises repair or replacement solutions about the current or future condition of machinery. Thanks to this type of maintenance we will be able to have the greatest amount of objective data on the machinery, being able to identify the possible errors or possible failures of the machine before they happen and allowing us to anticipate them. This is possible thanks to a continuous and prolonged analysis over time, which allows us to see the drastic variations or changes in the operation of the machine and which can lead to a future error, or a turning point in the operation of the system
One of the keys to performing a correct Predictive Maintenance based on the condition, it is to maintain a permanent monitoring that provides us with accurate and constant information that we use as a source to be able to detect potential abnormalities and to be able to carry out a study on when it is possible that the machinery can lower performance, and even detect the moment when it will fail. All the information we receive constantly provides us an improved planning that allows us to optimize processes, increasing energy efficiency and minimizing downtime, in a way that otherwise, would have been hard and with additional costs. The fact that we anticipate any changes that the equipment may undergo, makes the planning of the maintenance work much shorter and more precise, reducing spare parts costs, stoppage times and also costs related to the time needed by technicians to repair the machine.
Advantages of Condition-based Predictive Maintenance
Creating a maintenance philosophy based on Predictive Maintenance based on the Condition allows us to acquire greater savings compared to traditional preventive maintenance techniques, allowing us to optimize the times and calculate when it is really necessary to stop the machines.
The main advantages of this type of maintenance are:
- Increased workplace safety in the centre/ship/plant.
- Longer service life of the equipment.
- Reduction in the number of accidents.
- Reduction of repair time.
- Lower environmental impact.
- It allows us to better optimize the resources available to us.
Through the CBM we will be able to establish a defined control over the established parameters that we want to obtain from any of the teams from which we want to obtain 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 the parameters to be analysed. Through continuous monitoring we will be able to obtain a series of trends and performances through which we will be able to see when the performance of the equipment can come down, and even when it will fail.
Some of the functions that will allow us to integrate a Condition-based Predictive Maintenance system are:
- Detection of possible breaches, ruptures or wear pieces.
- Identify the moment when a functional failure will occur in the equipment, allowing us to anticipate it.
- Reduction of maintenance costs, both in terms of human and mechanical resources.
- Study trends in machine performance peaks to produce accurate reports.
When performing this monitoring it is very important to define which parameters are those that we want to study, and through which we will obtain the results to analyse. Although there are types of discontinuous monitoring (thermographies, tribologies), continuous monitoring is ideal.
Some of the parameters to be analysed within this continuous monitoring would be:
- Temperature analysis.
- 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 that will also affect from the first moment to avoid possible problems of productivity of the equipment, avoid and anticipate critical failures, and have a full understanding of what is going on throughout the process so that we can have everything under control. Being able to carry out trends and analyses according to the results is a determining factor and can provide us with infinite advantages.
