In condition monitoring programs, a technology will be employed to detect a problem with a machine or asset and a repair or overhaul may be conducted based on that information. Unfortunately, the overhaul is often conducted by another individual in the plant and the reliability engineer may never find out if his or her repair recommendation was correct. It is important to create a work procedure whereby the people who are repairing the machine report what they find when they open it up. It is also useful to retain damaged components that were removed from the machine for analysis. For example, if a vibration expert reports bearing wear and recommends that the bearings be replaced, those bearings should be recovered from the machine and opened up to see if they were in fact damaged. This is important for a few reasons. The first is to allow the analyst to learn from his or her success and mistakes. The second reason is to create a simple case history in order to educate others about the technology and a third is to justify the use of the technology in the plant.
