OK4450, I think it’s ironic that you bring up that line of logic(i think we’re off topic here, but), I happen to be 40 something, basically retired, looking for something else to do in life because of applying the exact logic I have been describing in the building facilities industry. I developed products/systems that totally ignored scheduled preventative maintenance and replaced that entire idea with measured maintenance principles. I know, you’ve never heard of that, but I’m sure you can guess what it is and imagine that I ran into the same… resistance(I’ll call it) there as I have here. After I had the opportunity to show people what happens when you measure instead of guess, it became a no-brainer, for some anyway, enough I suppose. Some would never change though. I could show them the math, charts, pictures, utility statements, they didn’t care, as far as they were concerned it couldn’t work, they had never heard of it before. They might say something like “well, the filter company says we should do it like this…” How do you argue with logic like that? Some people can not see the correct solution on their own or just because the logic is explained to them, they can only choose between the answers/advice given by others, maybe it makes life easier that way because they can say “I just did what I was supposed to”.
But anyway, a typical HVAC installation might include a feature like the measurement of filter efficiency. I think it’s obvious to see where this goes from here - some filter locations need to be changed more often, some less, some waayyyy less than their preventative schedule, but most likely NONE that need to be changed ON the schedule. The non-obvious advantage in this case might be seen in a seasonal situation, like when the trees in an area go to seed they might clog up the intake filters almost overnight, but if the filters were changed on a PM schedule the week before, it’s going to be awhile until that HVAC unit is working efficiently again, and if it’s a pharmaceutical or electronics manufacturing plant, that could be a real big problem, quick. You can guess where many other measured maintenance principles would come in handy, and preventative principles would seem pretty inadequate, or more likely, wasteful. I understand why PM is what a lot of industry was built on, and the guys that did it took pride in making sure there were no failures by replacing stuff early, they could afford it then, financially and environmentally(now there are high disposal costs for things like motor oil). They didn’t have things like cheap microprocessors and sensors and data networks already wired throughout the building, but now we do, so why not use them to KNOW what decisions to make instead of picking the schedule off some chart made by the company that sells the filter? Especially when you know the PM schedule is almost certainly wrong for your application, and wrong in the direction of profit to the filter company and waste to your company, except the times when you need to do maintenance sooner, but the PM guys would/could never know which is when.
You might have guessed by now that I didn’t ask my question about oil because I wanted to learn the religion of being a car geek, but one of the things I was never able to develop was a reliable method to determine how oil degrades in a measurable way. I was hoping there might be some old, or maybe new, mechanics trick that someone might give up, something physical that doesn’t require chemical sensors, if that even works.
I think we are done here.
