The concepts of “preventive maintenance” and “condition monitoring” are not always characterized in a way that is entirely accurate. They sometimes seem to be treated as a “one-size-fits-all” service that many operators believe they need. However, these concepts can mean very different things depending on the application. In essence, one needs to know what they are trying to prevent and what the conditions are leading up to the failure or anomaly before the problems can be prevented. An immediate response to this is often all encompassing, where the personnel responsible for running a process may believe they want to measure everything and monitor trends. Zeroing in on the most likely failure points and applying monitoring techniques to those points can be a more-efficient procedure.
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