Condition Based Maintenance, Life Cycle Management, and Autolog

Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) was instituted by the United States Navy in a policy outlined in OPNAV INSTRUCTION 4790.16 dated 6 May 1998. The goal is to move from time-directed preventive maintenance to condition-directed maintenance. It is hoped this will optimize readiness while reducing maintenance and manning requirements. The concept is that use of sensors, algorithms, and automated reasoning and decision making models to monitor equipment operations will provide critical analyses to operators that will help prevent impending failure. Red flags to operators allows maximization of maintenance effort that will focus limited resources to areas most needed to ensure safety and mission readiness while simultaneously minimizing operating costs (O & S), labor, and risk of mission degrading failures (Hedderich [3]). For the U.S. Navy, there is a large chasm to bridge between vision and reality. CBM technology is being slowly tested and integrated. But testing, modifying and back fitting all the Navy’s critical systems with CBM technology will be long term and costly and will be constantly faced with the dilemma of having just integrated one technology as it is being replaced by newer ones. In the mean time, more focus could be paid to possible interim phases that could be more quickly and cheaply integrated and still move the Navy forward in utilizing CBM technology. Autolog is such an effort and is offered here as an application and process to gather more real time data needed for CBM from one source that can be quickly and easily provided to distant engineering support activities for Gas Turbines systems while also easing record keeping and data transmittal requirements for the fleet.