Communication And Accountability Are The Keys To Success In Condition-Based Maintenance.

Abstract

By the mid-1990s, a large chemical company, in Kingsport, Tennessee, had over 10 years’ experience with several condition monitoring technologies, and were recognized as being technically proficient in predicting equipments problems before they caused production interruptions. These results were produced from a central predictive maintenance (PDM) group with seven core predictive technologies serving a plant containing over 20,000 rotating equipment trains. However, management could see room for improvement in communicating condition status information and holding both operations and maintenance personnel accountable for acting on it. They modified the maintenance organization for each operating area, and in 1999 implemented a web-based system to integrate and communicate predictive maintenance results. This paper describes the chemical company’s organization and web-based system for integrating and communicating predictive maintenance information, and discussed the improvement in holding operations and maintenance personnel accountable for condition-based maintenance results.