All you need to know about Condition Based Maintenance.

All you need to know about Condition Based Maintenance.

Condition Based Maintenance is the same as Predictive Maintenance (PdM). the short form of Condition Based Maintenance is CBM.

In simple words, CBM means protecting any machine from any type of failures, Catastrophic failure or Functional Failure.

Process of CBM – The condition of the component of the equipment is monitored closely and the sign of inception of fault is detected at very early stage. Root Cause Analysis is carried out to confirm the exact cause of the detected fault and corrective action is taken to restore the condition of the equipment component back to normal (healthy condition).

As it is also called as Predictive Maintenance, CBM is based on prediction of equipment performance or prediction of condition of equipment components.

CBM = CAss + CM + RCA + CAPA

CBM starts with Condition Assessment of component of equipment followed by corrective actions to restore the condition to its original healthy level. The condition monitoring starts only after confirming the healthy condition of each component of the equipment. (Condition Monitoring is done in the ‘Useful’ zone of bathtub curve. There is no point in monitoring condition of faulty component, when already the fault is known). The trend of the readings/ records of different performance parameters of component is maintained date wise. If the level of any parameter is seems rising then it is considered as symptom of the fault or early sign of the fault. Root Cause Symptom Analysis (RCSA) is done to find out the exact root cause of the fault and the Corrective Actions are taken to restore the condition of that component back to normal healthy state again. The Condition Monitoring part in CBM is repeated & its a continuous process. The Condition Monitoring in CBM is supposed to be manual, as Predictive Maintenance was based on manual condition monitoring. The Prescriptive Maintenance, which is improved version of CBM is based on Real Time or Online or ContinuousCondition Monitoring whereas CBM or PdM is based on periodic manual condition monitoring.

Advantages of CBM – CBM is basically 3rd revolution in Maintenance. Hence, we can write advantages of CBM (PdM) over 2nd maintenance revolution i.e. Preventive Maintenance.

Preventive Maintenance was being carried out on all equipment in a plant apart from the condition of the components of those equipment, whereas, Predictive Maintenance is done on only equipment who’s components are found early symptom of faults. Hence, PM is costly affair than PdM, if compared.

Preventive Maintenance doesn’t give guaranty that equipment will not fail whereas Predictive Maintenance can assure that equipment will not fail.

CBM supports maintenance team to maintain critical equipment.

Although, CM part of CBM is costly, what ultimately we get is much more than the cost, the plant uptime, saved spent on costly repairs and reduced burden on maintenance team, restricted untimely failres, etc.