Condition Monitoring Program Readiness Assessment
Most predictive maintenance efforts fail because of process, not sensors. This short assessment looks at assets, failure knowledge, techniques, skills, data handling and follow through to show where your program stands.
1. Do you have a current, criticality ranked asset list?
Criticality decides where monitoring money goes first.
2. How well do you know your dominant failure modes?
3. Which condition monitoring techniques are in use?
4. Are measurement points and routes defined and repeatable?
5. Who is trained to collect and interpret the data?
6. Where is condition data stored?
7. What happens when a reading goes out of limit?
8. Do you track what the program saves?
9. How good is your spare parts and planning for planned repairs?
10. Does management support the program?
How to use the assessment
Answer each of the ten questions for your site as it really is today, not as it is planned. Pick the option that best describes typical practice. If practice varies between areas, choose the lower one, because the weakest link limits results. The score is converted to a percentage and mapped to one of four bands with recommended next steps. Export the result to PDF and use it as a baseline to repeat every six or twelve months.
- Answer honestly, the score is for you
- Involve a technician as well as an engineer
- Re-run it after each improvement phase
- Use the lowest scoring questions as your action list
What the questions cover
They follow the path from asset knowledge to value. First, do you know what matters, through criticality and failure modes. Then, can you detect developing faults, through techniques, routes and skills. Next, can you act on them, through alarms, notifications and spares. Finally, can you prove the result, through tracking and management support. A gap at any step wastes the investment before it, which is why a program with expensive sensors but no planned response disappoints.
Reading your band
Reactive and starting out sites should resist the urge to buy a platform and instead fix basics such as the asset hierarchy and failure coding. Developing sites usually gain most from integrating data with work management and learning P-F intervals from their own history. Advanced sites can justify online monitoring and analytics, but should still validate alerts against real findings to avoid alarm fatigue.
Common mistakes
Buying technology before choosing which failures to detect is the classic error. Another is monitoring everything equally instead of by criticality. Programs also stall when the person who collects the data is not the one who decides on repairs, so make roles explicit. Finally, many teams never record the savings, so the budget disappears at the first cost cutting round.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is condition-based maintenance?
It is a strategy where maintenance is triggered by the measured condition of equipment rather than by a calendar or a failure. Techniques include vibration, oil analysis, thermography and ultrasound. It works best on failure modes that develop gradually and give warning.
Do I need sensors to start predictive maintenance?
No. Many sites start with handheld instruments and manual routes on the most critical rotating equipment. Online sensors make sense later for assets where the P-F interval is short, access is difficult or failure consequences are severe.
How long does it take to build a condition monitoring program?
A basic route on critical assets can start within weeks. Reaching a reliable program with trained staff, limits, alarms and savings tracking typically takes a year or more, depending on how much groundwork on assets and failure data is needed.
Which assets should I monitor first?
Start with the ones whose failure causes the greatest production, safety or cost impact and which have failure modes that give warning, such as critical pumps, fans, compressors and gearboxes. Criticality ranking from your asset data guides the list.
If you want help connecting condition data to your ERP asset and work order structure, Netray can review your setup and suggest a practical first step.
Related Tools
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