PdM Program Success Starts with Hard Work

When you have developed a network of people — either through conference attendance or training classrooms, or through more informal avenues like blogs and predictive maintenance forums — you have a real sounding board for developing your PdM program. In my experience, though, the only way you are going to develop a true program for any of the disciplines (infrared, vibration, motor testing, ultrasound, etc.) is to put in some hard work yourself. You must determine what should be included and not included in the program and make some decisions on what the criteria will be to determine that.
This may or may not be a difficult task, but it is one that must be done. There is no simple way to do this. You will make some mistakes. These will not be earth-shattering ones — just performing inspections that do not need to be done or are of little value to the operation of the plant. It will be worth it in the long run.
The key is to have more instead of not having enough. You can always pare items from your program based on your experience using your infrared camera, motor testing equipment, vibration data logger or ultrasonic probe. Each item you cut from your program should be based on your testing and experience. By doing this, you help to develop your technique and experience using the equipment. At first, you will go through a lot of pads of paper outlining what you believe should be included, and you will constantly check your operator’s manual for your equipment. In the end, you will know the equipment you will be testing/scanning.

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