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 thismeans unplanned down-time couldbeavoided, savingthecostorunanticipated failure. WhiletheCompanyhadworld-classskillsinthedesignanddevelopmentof its laser products, it lacked specialist knowledge of condition monitoring, although the Managing Director had gained some exposure to the subject in his career.