The Event Tracker provides an easy method for creating the optimum exchange of information and coordination of activities when responding to high impact maintenance events.
The more diligent customers are about providing feedback via the Event Tracker, the more thorough and accurate their PdM programs become. The Event Tracker is designed to help customers keep track of their work in response to recommended actions, while also providing analysts valuable information about the root causes determined to have prompted the problem in the first place.
Also, the information entered in the Event Tracker is used to generate several Dashboard elements, such as the Top Five Root Causes and the Average Time to Repair metrics.
Customers can use as many or few of the fields in the Event Tracker as meet their needs. The following are examples of how the Event Tracker can benefit a PdM program:
Example 1:
Instead of treating each machine's issues as isolated events, the Event Tracker helps maintenance teams track root problems that may have a plant-wide impact on machinery. A plant has several of the same machines that are used for a common purpose. Over time, each of these machines develops a bearing problem, which is detected and reported by the analyst. In each case, the maintenance team determines root cause is a lubrication issue. By entering this root case in the Event Tracker, it becomes evident that the same lubrication issue is causing widespread bearing issues. The maintenance team can then evaluate whether the wrong lubricant is being used or whether it is being applied incorrectly.
Upper management typically only sees the cost associated with fixing a problem. The Event Tracker provides a means to track the net gain to the company, by showing how much was saved by early detection/correction. Most Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) track the cost to repair a machine, but do not provide the net gain to the company with regards to avoided production/downtime losses. By entering the CMMS work order number into the Event Tracker and entering a financial impact value, you can track the net gain to your company. This information -- the cost saved by the diagnosis - can be invaluable when justifying your PdM program funding to upper management.
The Event Tracker serves as a way for the maintenance team to provide feedback to the analyst regarding the actions taken in response to the recommendations. For example, an analyst makes a recommendation on a machine and then sees the problem still exists the next time data is collected (for example, 30 days later). Without the Event Tracker, the analyst has no way of knowing whether work was done after the initial recommendation was made and this is a reoccurrence, or whether it is still the same issue. However, if the maintenance team uses the Event Tracker and notes the repair was made, the analyst can investigate whether the repair did not fix the issue, the diagnosis/recommendation was incorrect, or there is another underlying issue. Along the same lines, if the maintenance team defers a work order (noting the repair will take place at the next outage), the analyst will know that the detected issue is the same issue diagnosed the previous month and that repairs are slated. However, if the subsequent month shows rapid degradation, the analyst may contact the maintenance team to let them know that the repair may not be able to wait until the scheduled maintenance.
Editing an Event in the Event Tracker