Page 361 - Intro Predictive Maintenance

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A TOTAL-PLANT PREDICTIVE

MAINTENANCE PROGRAM

With all of the techniques that are available for predictive maintenance, how do we
select the best methods required to monitor the critical machines, equipment, and
systems in a plant? It would be convenient if a single system existed that would
provide all of the monitoring and analysis techniques required to routinely monitor
every critical piece of equipment. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

Each of the predictive techniques discussed in the preceding chapter are highly spe-
cialized. Each has a group of systems vendors that promote their technique as the
single solution to a plant’s predictive maintenance needs. The result of this special-
ization is that no attempt has been made by predictive maintenance systems vendors
to combine all of the different techniques into a single, total-plant system. Therefore,
each plant must decide which combination of techniques and systems is required to
implement its predictive maintenance program.

If a plant decides to use all of the available techniques, a total capital cost for instru-
mentation and systems can easily exceed $150,000. In most cases, this fact alone
would prohibit implementing a program; however, the true costs would be much
higher. To implement a program that includes all of the predictive maintenance tech-
niques would require extensive staffing, training, and technical support. A minimum
staff of at least five trained technicians and three highly trained engineers would be
required to maintain this type of program. The annual costs for this operation would
be extremely high. The actual labor and overhead costs will depend on the salaries
and overhead rates of each plant, but the annual cost could easily exceed $500,000.

Because of the high capital and operating costs, this type of program would have to
save more than 1 million dollars each year to justify its costs. Even though this type
of savings is possible in larger plants, most small to medium-sized plants cannot justify
including all of the available techniques in their predictive maintenance programs.

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