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Is Your Equipment’s Health Checkup Stuck in the Past?

Dan Freeland

02.04.2025

Beyond Basic Monitoring: Giving Your Equipment the Health Check it Deserves

I was chatting with a colleague recently (Thanks Mike), and he made a great comparison between how we monitor our own health and how we monitor the health of critical equipment. Although these types of comparisons have been around for a while, the similarities are striking—except for one major difference: we take much better preventative care of ourselves than we do of our machines. Maybe that is for obvious selfish reasons but doesn’t really need to be the case.  

Let’s break it down. 

When I was younger, I didn’t think much about my health. No routine checkups, no monitoring—just moving along, assuming all was well. The same goes for a brand-new piece of equipment. It’s running fine, so why worry? 

As I’ve gotten older, my doctor has me coming in every six months for checkups and bloodwork. That’s akin to equipment inspections and oil analysis—periodic deep dives into health to catch problems before they get too serious. 

At home, I have some basic health monitors—thermometers, blood pressure cuffs, and maybe even a smartwatch tracking my heart rate. In the industrial world, we use similar spot-check tools like vibration sensors and thermal imaging cameras. These tools can alert us to potential issues, but they only provide a snapshot in time. 

Now, if my doctor sees something suspicious in my bloodwork, I get sent to a specialist for further testing and diagnosis. If oil analysis or a diagnostic tool picks up a problem in a machine, it’s time for a deeper dive—just like a doctor would do. 

And sometimes, those findings lead to surgery—hopefully, they are planned, rather than an emergency. Would you rather have a scheduled outpatient procedure or be rushed to the ER? The same logic applies to equipment: preventative action today is far better than catastrophic failure tomorrow.


More Data, Smarter Decisions 

Most of us wouldn’t settle for just a thermometer to monitor our health when we have access to smartwatches, fitness trackers, and other health tech that give us a fuller picture. The more data we have, the more informed our decisions can be. 

So why settle for a single-function vibration sensor on your equipment? Sure, it tells you one thing—but your machines are far more complex than a single vibration reading can capture. What about internal pressure? Temperature fluctuations? Humidity conditions? These factors impact lubrication, wear rates, and overall machine health in ways a simple vibe sensor just can’t see. 

Machine Vitals goes beyond just one measurement, painting a much larger picture of equipment health between inspections and oil analysis deep dives. It’s like upgrading from a basic thermometer to a full suite of health monitors, helping you catch potential problems early and avoid expensive, unexpected failures. 

When it comes to your health, you wouldn’t rely on a single reading from a decades-old tool. So why would you do that for the critical equipment that keeps your plant running? If you take reliability seriously, the answer is pretty clear.