By addressing your existing maintenance procedures for steps that are no longer required, don’t make sense, or can be replaced with automation, you free up limited maintenance resources.
For example, here are three activities you should stop doing now:
• Test motor vibration. Motor vibration is such a critical measurement that it should be made by continuous monitoring (with appropriate alarming). Handheld vibration testers are still essential for troubleshooting and repair, and may be used to PM the monitors.
• Check motor windings with insulation resistance (IR) tester. Wherever practical, install an automatic system IR tester. Where IR testing manually, are you trending the measurements or just looking to verify failure? If the former, is the test frequency sufficient for a meaningful trend? If the latter, the test is probably not telling anything you don’t already know. Don’t use this test against an absolute value that is pass or fail; use it to trend condition for failure prediction and intervention.
• Pull fuses and clean clip contacts. While this made sense at one time, it’s safer and faster to use a thermographic camera to see fuse clip condition.
