Vibration Monitoring

The most commonly used condition monitoring technology is vibration monitoring. Vibration analysis has been around for many years. Effective monitoring programs became possible in the early 1980?s when the US Navy published a Request for Proposal for a small portable datalogger for use on ships of the fleet. Because of that RFP, a number of dataloggers reached commercialization. Over the last fifteen years the capabilities and accuracy of the dataloggers and associated software has increased so that today?s equipment is easy to use, accurate and reliable.

About 45% of American manufacturing now use some kind of a vibration-monitoring program. Companies like Ford, GM, Dupont and others have used it for many years. Studies have shown ROI's in the range of 4 to 30 times. Maintenance costs have been reduced by 7 to 60%, unscheduled downtime reduced by 33 to 45% and production increases have ranged from 2 to 40%. Additional reported savings include reduced spare parts inventories, reduced power consumption and improved quality and safety. Major components of a program are data collection, data analysis and reporting the machine condition and recommended actions.