Predictive Maintenance Solves Problems Early

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They say “hindsight is 20/20,” but what would some foresight be worth?

Many plants use preventive maintenance. They replace parts before they go bad, usually after a certain calculated length of time. Unfortunately, they frequently replace good parts. This can add costs: unnecessary downtime, lost hours and lost productivity.

Predictive maintenance takes the next step. It goes beyond preventive maintenance and finds machines that need to be repaired before they fail.

IBT's Industrial Maintenance Technologies (IMT) offers a predictive maintenance program.

One of IMT's tools in predictive maintenance is vibration analysis. With it, a technician can find hidden problems before they have a chance to halt productivity. A predictive maintenance program using vibration analysis can be set up to routinely record vibration data on customers' running machines. There's usually no need to shut down the equipment during the test. The information gathered is then used to detect imbalance, misalignment, failing bearings and a host of other machinery conditions.

Finding problems before they become catastrophic allows you to perform the maintenance during scheduled downtime instead of being at the mercy of the machine.

You choose the time!

With all the different types of predictive/preventive maintenance programs, IMT can usually find the root cause of the failure and work to correct the condition. This beats chasing the symptoms and doing the work again in a few months. Correctly diagnosing the problems means they aren’t just found early, but also fixed early – and correctly.

The information IMT collects is analyzed to determine the condition of the machinery. As the machines are tested, trend and history data help the analyst with valuable information to assure proper diagnosis, even on more complicated pieces of equipment.

Vibration analysis is just one of the tools in a range of high tech solutions IMT can use to troubleshoot mechanical and electrical machine problems. IBT's IMT group can set up a predictive maintenance program to suit the needs of a customer, to detect problems before they become huge problems.

To learn more about predictive maintenance – and all the other ways IMT can help prevent problems, contact Chris Treat.