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Resources · Tool

Predictive Maintenance Viability Screener

Each condition monitoring method detects specific types of wear or damage. Vibration analysis detects bearing wear, and thermal imaging detects loose connections. No method can detect a control board that fails without warning. Assess one asset type and one failure mode at a time, then add it to the project. Most projects include several. The project total adds up only the items worth monitoring. A failing item stays failed and is never averaged with the others.

A deep-groove ball bearing standing on end with its polished steel balls and cage visible, and a small cylindrical vibration sensor clamped to a cast machine housing beside it.
Takes
4 minutes
You get
A viability verdict, the sensing method, and expected warning time
Cost
Free, no sign-up

This tool runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter is sent to us, stored or logged. Closing the tab deletes it. Answer for one failure mode at a time. 'Predictive maintenance on our pumps' is not yet a project, because the failure mode decides the result. Add every asset type in your project. The project total keeps the result for each one and never averages them.

The asset

UNIT 01

The asset type gives the context. The failure mode in the next step decides whether monitoring is possible at all.

What kind of equipment is it?

The failure mode

UNIT 02

Choose the failure mode that actually causes your stoppages, not the one you would most like to predict. Condition monitoring cannot detect two of these modes at all, and the result will tell you so.

How does it fail?

Existing monitoring and access

UNIT 03

Both answers affect the installation cost, sometimes by more than the cost of the sensors.

What monitoring exists on this asset today?
How accessible is the mounting point?

What it costs you now

UNIT 04

Base your estimates on what actually happened over the last two or three years, not on what the maintenance plan assumes.

Failures of this specific mode, on one asset.

per year

From the stop to running again, including waiting for parts and people.

hours

Lost margin, idle labour, penalties and the cost of the repair. Do not use the sale price of the lost output.

S$per hour

The number of assets of this type that share this failure mode. This number usually decides whether monitoring pays for itself.

assets

Verdict

UNIT 05

Viable with limits

Complete the inputs to see the result

Select the asset and the failure mode, then enter a failure rate, the hours lost per failure and an hourly cost. The tool needs all of these to give a result.

Project total

UNIT 06

The project total lists each asset type you have added, with its own result. The tool does not average different failure modes. The total is the sum of what each asset type contributes.

Not the right tool at this scale

Add at least one asset type to see a project total

Assess one asset type and failure mode, then add it to the project with the button below its result. The total updates each time you add an asset type.

The P-F interval

UNIT 07
The P-F intervalA curve showing asset condition declining over time. Condition is flat and healthy at first, then bends downward. Point P marks where the failure first becomes detectable by condition monitoring. Point F, further right and lower, marks functional failure. The horizontal distance between them is labelled as the P-F interval, the only window in which action is possible. A note explains that where this interval is measured in months it buys planning, and where it is measured in hours it buys an alarm that arrives too late to act on.ConditionTime in servicePDetectableFFailedP-F interval: the only time you can actHealthy
The P-F interval decides whether monitoring is worth paying for. If it is long enough to order a part and schedule a repair, monitoring lets you plan. If the alarm and the failure arrive almost together, monitoring gives you nothing.

The most important number in this screener is the time between the point when a failure first becomes detectable (P) and the point when the asset fails (F). Maintenance engineers call this the P-F interval. Condition monitoring is only useful when this interval exists.

If the interval is months, monitoring gives you time to plan. You can order the part, book a maintenance window and replace the bearing at a convenient time. If the interval is hours, the alarm arrives too late to act on. In that case, we recommend a redundant unit or a spare part in stock. If there is no interval, as with most electronic failures, there is nothing to detect, and no sensor can help.

The avoidable share is capped at 70% of the annual cost before detectability is applied. Someone must receive the warning, trust it and act on it within the interval, and the planned repair still has a cost. Business cases that assume monitoring removes a failure mode completely usually fall short at the first review.

Technical references

UNIT 08

These are the sources for the reasoning on this page. We mark standards that you must pay to read. Where a free document covers the same subject better, we list it first.

Links open in a new tab, so you do not lose anything you have entered on this page. We checked every link when we built the page. If a link no longer works, please tell us and we will remove it.

Each of these tools is a short version of a conversation with one of our engineers. If your result raised a question you want to discuss, book a scoping call and bring your result with you.

Get a monitoring specification for your failure mode

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