In the 2002 movie "Minority Report," moviegoers were exposed to an interesting view of crime prevention in the future. The plot of the movie revolves around a futuristic police force called "Pre-Crime" that uses psychics (the "pre-cogs") to predict crimes before they happen. In the movie, Tom Cruise's character quickly sorts through data related to the future crime and determines where the crime will occur, when it will occur, and how it will occur. Through his analysis, the Pre-Crime police know exactly where to go to prevent the crime. As a result, the Pre-Crime police arrive on scene and arrest the suspect for the homicide that they were just about to commit. In the movie, the Pre-Crime program saved many lives. Whether such a crime prevention program would work in reality remains to be seen but catastrophe prevention is certainly important in the world today. This is especially true in the world of maintenance and reliability. How many times in the past 10 years have CEO's watching the news seen reports of disasters their companies created and thought "if only we would have known?" How much pain and devastation could have been avoided, if only they would have known to replace that piece of pipe (replace that seal, test their safety intrumented system, fix that motor earlier, etc.)?
Hindsight is always 20/20. Foresight is priceless. If companies want to see which of their assets are likely to fail next and when that is likely to happen, the future is here. Analytical tools like APM software give reliability engineers the ability the prevent those same failures that if they happen could land their company in the news to the chagrin of its CEO and stockholders. Jim Weller of Xcel Energy uses Meridium APM software to predict future failures in boiler tubes. In this video, he shows how much money Xcel Energy saved because they had the foresight to make informed decisions:
For more information on APM software, please click here.