Predictive maintenance (PdM) programs are crucial to an organization’s ability to avert unplanned or even unnecessary downtime that can adversely affect its ability to produce or operate. Unlike time-based or run-to-failure approaches to maintenance management, condition-based programs are ideally geared to pay for the cost of implementation by extending the service lives of motors and rotating equipment, averting costly unplanned downtime and minimizing the costs of replacing expensive equipment. Predictive maintenance programs are most effective when all available means of measuring health and analyzing health trends of electric motors, cables, power quality, and load are rigorously implemented.
In other words, safe and continuous operation of plants and facilities drives revenue and profit and depends upon high motor reliability. Predictive maintenance of motor systems is a necessity when it comes to supporting reliability objectives that in turn support business objectives.
The power generation industry, as an example, ranks at the top of this requirement for uninterrupted operation and safe, continuous production. A number of motors run equipment that is ancillary to the production or health of a company, for example, one of a few rooftop motors for an HVAC system, which won’t have an immediate impact on the HVAC system if it stops working. Other motors, however, are critical to a company’s ability to conduct business — that is, they are motors that drive such things as conveyor systems, fluid pumps, or production-line machinery that a company relies upon to generate revenue and profit every day.