An old post for starters:
Posted by Roger Eastin on Monday, 27 October 1997, at 5:16 p.m., in response to Predictive maintenance methods, posted by Felix cruz on Tuesday, 21 October 1997, at 3:06 p.m.
Predictive maintenance methods mentioned in the QS9 standard are identified by the type of equipment you are operating. If you have machinery that uses items such as gear boxes, then you should consider having vibration analysis done on them (if they are considered key manufacturing equipment). Here the analysis would detect gear wear or possible fractures of the gears. If you have equipment that uses control boards which contain electronic circuits, then you need to look at IR testing of the circuits. This analysis would detect "hot spots" on the circuit which may mean that a component is beginning to break down. If the equipment you are running uses lubricating fluids such as oil, then you would look at using a lab to do fluid analysis. Here you would look for oil breakdown or contamination levels. If your equipment uses perishable tooling such as drill or milling bits, you would set up a program to measure tool wear to anticipate failure. For the first three methods, outside companies can do this. You could probably do this last one. (You could even track MTBF of these parts in order to improve wear by using different vendors, different coatings of bits,etc.)
