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Hot Trends: Predictive maintenance thermography inspection plan implementation on a CMMS
Published 2024-03-30 by Alvaro Oberon (a 6.6 minute read) | Back to the main page
Red id usually bad. Blue is usually good.Your training will allow you to say more than this.
Introduction
Thermography is a maintenance inspection technique that reveals hidden issues that might otherwise go unnoticed. By capturing thermal images of equipment, it is possible to visually detect abnormally high-temperature areas and abnormal heat patterns.
In electrical systems, a wide variety of issues result in an increase in temperature in the components involved. For example, loose connections, overloaded circuits and faulty components generated excess heat. In most cases, the increase in temperature is gradual over time which means that knowing the base or normal heat signature of the system and optimally timing the inspection intervals, increases the likelihood of detecting an upcoming issue before it escalated into a costly failure or safety hazard.
Thermographic inspections are also widely used to predict failures on mechanical equipment. In this case, it usually has to do with the fact that mechanical friction generates heat and, in turn, excessive friction can lead to premature wear and tear. As with electrical systems, an increase in the heat signature of a mechanical component compared to the baseline indicates that the normal (and efficient) operating mode has changed and the component needs some attention.
There's a whole science to determining the optimum inspection intervals and the educated "guess" of how much time remains until a detected issue evolves to be a critical problem. The point being that thermography is a tool that doesn't simply work by itself. Knowledge is required in the interpretation of the readings.
Thermography has been around for a while now and if you are an industrial maintenance professional you probably know a thing or two about it - your company may even use it every day. In this article, I'll assume you're already familiar with the technique and I will look at the process of integration of a regular thermographic inspections program with the organizational capabilities of a CMMS in order to increase the power of the technique even more.
CMMS implementation of a thermography inspection program
The CMMS will mainly provide the scheduled work triggers by issuing work orders for the inspection work at the set time. It will store thermographic images and finally, it will log any corrective action initiated from an inspection for later reference.
The implementation of this program is split into 6 general steps, as follows:
Determine key equipment where the inspection should take place.
We'll be looking at equipment that is critical to production and equipment that can potentially reveal issues trough thermographic analysis. A balance has to be struck with the amount of checks to perform and the criticality of the equipment and the maintenance department work load - should each point of lighting be looked at? Probably not.
Determine inspection intervals.
Should inspections on electrical panels be done every hour? Probably not. If they do, you have a big problem that needs to be tackled right now!
Implement inspection routes that include thermographic inspection and possibly also regular checks that need to happen in the same area.
The technician is already there, may as well do additional tasks. In comma CMMS we would use checklists that have a call for the thermographic image and to, for example, confirm the general tidiness of the breaker room. Link these checklist templates to maintenance plan source work orders (these are the work order templates the scheduler is going to call every time it triggers).
Implement the inspection schedule.
You'll spend some time on this screen, scheduling work orders.
Possibly pre-assign the work order to a selected list of technicians (the ones that have been trained to do this). Provide instructions on how to store the images that were taken. I'd suggest keeping a link to a network drive instead of saving the images to the CMMS. That link is stored on the CMMS for each system the technician is looking at. This comes from the fact that most likely the connection from the thermographic camera is not directly to the CMMS and files may need to be downloaded to a network location. Keep doing that but link that location inside the work order. This way there's no extra step to image storage. On exactly how this could be done depends on the camera that is used.
Do not forget to set the work order type as "PREDICTIVE". You'll want to make sure of that to analyze your department's work later: how much time are your technicians spending on corrective versus predictive or preventive work?
Remember to properly set all the work order parameters and pre-assign to the users that were trained on these matters. It's important for later analysis.
Because all actions are linked to each other, corrective actions that may have to be taken following an issue detected by thermography will forever be linked to the inspection work order (an issue entered on an inspection checklist will link to a new work order). The full path from detection to resolution is easily traced which is valuable to investigate future problems faster or to demonstrate actions to management, regulators or insurance companies (hopefully that will never happen!).
Note: could variations in patterns be automatically detected in some way? I'm not sure - maybe users with more experience could weight in - I'll add any additional information to the article if it becomes available.
Train the technicians in both thermographic imaging concepts and the logging of information in the CMMS.
With experience the technicians will recognize the heat signature of the system and probably identify deviations from it. When in doubt, use the work order network drive links to access the history and compare images from previous dates.
CMMS modules may be developed to automate some or all of the analysis, possibly including a connection of the device to the CMMS API. That depends on the capabilities of the devices in use and the answer to my note on point c) above.
As an additional note on this point, consider employing a specialist to train your staff. It will be money well spent.
Continuously reassess equipment and inspection intervals and adjust CMMS checklist contents as required.
This one is obvious: continuous improvement is one of the pillars of any management program.
Conclusion and next steps
As much as I'd like, I cannot give you an exact recipe for the implementation of thermographic inspection plan using your CMMS. There are too many variables to account for: your CMMS, your thermographic cameras, etc. The best I can offer is what I did above: general step-by-step guidelines.
From the perspective of your actual situation, use the points on this article to guide you through the process. Alternatively and if available, make use of the consultancy services of your CMMS provider to advise and potentially customize any missing features on the CMMS to make the implementation of the program as streamlined as possible.