CML Reduction – Are you planning to fail?

Introduction

The story of Rip Van Winkle is a useful metaphor in the saga of Condition Monitoring Location (CML) evolution.  Many of us have witnessed the implementation of CML reduction programs in past years.  The Industry has reduced the quantity of CML’s and we are now waking up after many years to see what has happened to this program.

For many years, the industry expectation was for steady incremental improvement in CML placements, improvement of the information provided, and a reduction of costs due to more efficient CML planning and execution.  In recent years, we’ve seen CML numbers reduced, but only to later realize that good data was also reduced.  Just like Rip Van Winkle, who fell asleep and woke up in a new time: we are waking up and seeing the unfortunate results of years of CML reduction programs.

The concept of reducing CMLs is totally misguided.  The number and location of CMLs should be OPTIMIZED, not systematically reduced.  CML allocation in piping can be much like walking through a maze. That is, without a good process you can run into a lot of dead ends before arriving at your intended destination.

Virtually all of these failures can be traced to abandonment of proven management concepts that have been accepted for many years.  Some of those concepts include: