Programme

This function is concerned with preparation of SCHEDULE to enable the repair, schedule to be planned. This function attempts to reply the following type of questions:

• When should the equipment be taken for maintenance or repair?
• What maintenance policy should be adopted?
• When should the restoring action start and likely time when it can be finished?
• Who will maintain or repair so as to restore the condition?
• What is the action plan?

Permanent monitoring is generally applied where the most important economic factor is damage to the machine while CM is most suitable where the loss in production is the most important economic factor. Some situations may best be served by both methods used in parallel.

Condition checking is employed where a check measurement is taken with the machine running, using some suitable parameter again. And these are then used as measures of the condition of machine at that particular instant. For effectiveness, the measurement should be qualitative, accurate and quantifiable with known limiting values. Fixing these values requires a large amount of recorded past experience for the particular type of machine. This makes the method less flexible than the trend monitoring, particularly if it is required to give lead time as well as machine knowledge. However, it is preferable in case, there are several similar machines operating together because comparative checking can be done between the machines under monitoring and other new/good machines.