Something that worked well for us is if you make a visual change in the project one thing is we talk about planning and scheduling in a reliability of projects. We talk about preventive maintenance and reliability projects. What could easily happen is that you start documenting inspection routes and somebody sits in a corner documenting inspection routes right? We tried to work on our planning and scheduling…it may not be very visual on the floor. So, sometimes it could be a good idea just to make sure it’s okay…let’s pick our top five or top 10 piece of equipment and let’s fix them up.

One common way of controlling the state-of-health of a piece of equipment is to monitor its vibration signature. High quality data is required, so using high-resolution analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) to acquire and digitize the analog vibration signal is a key enabler to the arena of predictive maintenance.

Maintenance personnel go to work and do their jobs taking measurements and writing reports, often with great care and skill. Their reports and recommendations then travel into a deep abyss from which they never return. Sound familiar? This situation is all too common in the condition monitoring (CM) world.

Certification from an accredited organization is important. It ensures that personnel have at least a minimum degree of understanding of the subject matter. Certification is also important for compliance and liability reasons. But does having certified personnel on staff ensure the program will be a success? Is certification enough?