Condition-based maintenance (CBM) detects equipment failures before they happen. Can you afford to be without it?
By Barry Parker
Condition-based maintenance (CBM) was perhaps best described by maritime writer Ryan Skinner, who observed a shift from the prevailing industry maxim of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” to an emerging philosophy of “Fix it before it breaks.” More formally, the International Standards Organization, in a 2004 publication, defined CBM as “maintenance performed as governed by condition monitoring programmes.” Danny Shorten, Product Manager for Maintenance Management at Lloyds Register (LR), defined CBM in a recent presentation as “An equipment maintenance strategy based on measuring the condition of equipment to assess whether it will fail during some future period, and then taking appropriate action to avoid the consequences of that failure.”
CBM has seen applicability to rotating devices with close tolerances, like shafts, which are difficult to inspect. More recently, with advances in technology, it’s been applied to up-and-down movements – within engine cylinders, for example. Shorten and others emphasize that switching to CBM from a different maintenance approach requires ongoing input from the individuals involved as the processes and policies surrounding maintenance are changed. It’s a people business, ultimately, and maintenance culture is impacted as much by people as it is by new technology. Just because it’s possible to monitor a process (a spinning shaft, say) using a new indicator (likely tied to the home office via a VSAT or maritime broadband hookup) doesn’t mean that everyone involved, both shoreside and on the vessels, need not be comfortable with their new and evolving roles.
The business case and return on investment (ROI) for CBM, at the highest level, is based on the trade-off between costs and benefits, the most obvious of which is the increased “up” time for components. Not surprisingly, the early inroads have occurred in the less price-sensitive parts of the maritime world with a high “shadow price” on downtime. These include naval vessels, oil company supply chains, gas transportation and the cruise sector. An important crossover sector has been offshore oil platforms where, by definition, the working assets did not come into port, allowing maritime applications aboard commercial vessels to benefit from the ingrained learning curves developed around the offshore sector. A secondary set of economic benefits may come from outsourcing, whereby a component manufacturer assumes responsibility for the maintenance function, or for one or more items.
See more at: http://www.maritime-executive.com/article/fix-it-before-it-breaks
By Barry Parker
Condition-based maintenance (CBM) was perhaps best described by maritime writer Ryan Skinner, who observed a shift from the prevailing industry maxim of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” to an emerging philosophy of “Fix it before it breaks.” More formally, the International Standards Organization, in a 2004 publication, defined CBM as “maintenance performed as governed by condition monitoring programmes.” Danny Shorten, Product Manager for Maintenance Management at Lloyds Register (LR), defined CBM in a recent presentation as “An equipment maintenance strategy based on measuring the condition of equipment to assess whether it will fail during some future period, and then taking appropriate action to avoid the consequences of that failure.”
CBM has seen applicability to rotating devices with close tolerances, like shafts, which are difficult to inspect. More recently, with advances in technology, it’s been applied to up-and-down movements – within engine cylinders, for example. Shorten and others emphasize that switching to CBM from a different maintenance approach requires ongoing input from the individuals involved as the processes and policies surrounding maintenance are changed. It’s a people business, ultimately, and maintenance culture is impacted as much by people as it is by new technology. Just because it’s possible to monitor a process (a spinning shaft, say) using a new indicator (likely tied to the home office via a VSAT or maritime broadband hookup) doesn’t mean that everyone involved, both shoreside and on the vessels, need not be comfortable with their new and evolving roles.
The business case and return on investment (ROI) for CBM, at the highest level, is based on the trade-off between costs and benefits, the most obvious of which is the increased “up” time for components. Not surprisingly, the early inroads have occurred in the less price-sensitive parts of the maritime world with a high “shadow price” on downtime. These include naval vessels, oil company supply chains, gas transportation and the cruise sector. An important crossover sector has been offshore oil platforms where, by definition, the working assets did not come into port, allowing maritime applications aboard commercial vessels to benefit from the ingrained learning curves developed around the offshore sector. A secondary set of economic benefits may come from outsourcing, whereby a component manufacturer assumes responsibility for the maintenance function, or for one or more items.
See more at: http://www.maritime-executive.com/article/fix-it-before-it-breaks
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