Failures usually announce themselves
A bearing rarely fails without warning. Vibration climbs for days, temperature creeps, cycle times stretch. The signal is there. The question is whether it reaches someone while a planned stop still lies between now and the failure.
It is a scheduling problem as much as a sensing one
Detecting drift is the first third of the job. The alert then has to become a work order, the work order has to find the next changeover in the schedule, and the spare has to be on the shelf when the technician arrives.
Plants that buy sensors but leave those three steps to phone calls get alerts nobody acts on. The value appears when maintenance, scheduling and stores share one system.
What good looks like
The drift is flagged in the morning. A work order is drafted with the likely cause attached. Planning slots it into the afternoon changeover. The part is reserved. The line loses under an hour inside a stop it had already paid for, and no product is scrapped.
In short
- Most mechanical failures give days of warning.
- An alert is only useful if it becomes scheduled work.
- Aim to land repairs inside stops you already planned.