The Company wished to further improve the reliability of its products by implementing a pro-active condition monitoring strategy to achieve the very early signs of problems before the problem actually occurred. By this means unplanned down-time could be avoided, saving the cost or unanticipated failure. While the Company had world-class skills in the design and development of its laser products, it lacked specialist knowledge of condition monitoring, although the Managing Director had gained some exposure to the subject in his career.