It is easy to justify frequent condition monitoring for high criticality machines, even when high reliability is being achieved. When high reliability is achieved for medium and lower criticality machines, it becomes harder to justify frequent monitoring. It is not uncommon for managers without a good understanding of condition monitoring to want to eliminate condition monitoring costs from their budgets, so you need a way to justify the amount of monitoring you are carrying out. This presentation will give a method for finding the optimum condition monitoring frequencies to minimise overall business costs. If you do decide to monitor less often then there is an increased risk that a failure will sneak through undetected. A method is given to protect condition monitoring personnel from blame for failures due to monitoring frequencies being reduced to minimise overall business costs.

Peter is a Mechanical Engineer with an extensive background Asset Management and Reliability Engineering. He worked for the Steelworks in Wollongong for over 27 years, for Shell Services for 3 year, for SIRF Roundtables for 12 years as the NSW Industrial Maintenance Roundtable Facilitator and now works freelance. His experience includes maintenance management, reliability engineering, maintenance strategy, machine condition monitoring and RCA failure investigations. He has experience in a wide range of equipment and processes from raw materials handling to turbo machinery, with bearings as a specialty. Peter’s specialist areas are in Condition Monitoring, Failure Analysis and Reliability Engineering.