Set Up Condition-Based Maintenance
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The features that are available depend on your plan.
- Premium Plan: Meter-triggered automations that create work orders.
- Enterprise Plan: Custom automations, including multi-asset triggers and all conditions and actions.
Condition-based maintenance triggers work from an asset's real-time condition, such as temperature, vibration, or pressure, instead of from a fixed calendar schedule. For example, a motor running hot or a pump vibrating beyond its normal range may need attention today, regardless of when it was last serviced. When a condition signal reaches MaintainX® as a meter reading, you can use an automation to trigger a request or a work order the moment that reading crosses a threshold you define.
What You Need Before You Start​
- Assets in MaintainX for the equipment you want to monitor.
- Meters created in MaintainX and mapped to your condition-monitoring tags (for example, temperature, vibration, or pressure), typically fed by an OT data connector or the MaintainX REST API. For more information, see Smart Tag Mapping for OT Data.
Step 1: Identify Your Conditions and Thresholds​
Determine which signals and threshold values represent a meaningful maintenance state for each asset. A typical mapping might look like this:
| Condition | Threshold | Severity | MaintainX Action |
|---|---|---|---|
| Temperature | Above 80°C | Warning | Create a Request |
| Temperature | Above 100°C | Critical | Create a Work Order |
| Vibration | Above 12 mm/s | Warning | Create a Request |
| Pressure | Below 30 PSI | Critical | Create a Work Order |
Keep your initial scope narrow. Start with one or two condition types on a small set of critical assets, such as pumps, motors, or compressors, so you can validate signal accuracy and tune thresholds before scaling.
Step 2: Set Up Your Automation​
Once your meters are mapped and your thresholds are defined, create an automation that connects them and configure these settings for your condition-based use case:
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Trigger: Select the Asset that corresponds to your condition tag, or select Add multiple assets to apply the same rule to up to 250 similar assets at once. Select the Meter that corresponds to your condition tag, then set the trigger condition that represents your threshold. For example, Is above 80 to detect a high-temperature warning. Use the For setting to control how sensitive the trigger is:
- One reading: Triggers on every reading that crosses the threshold, which suits critical conditions where you want to know about each occurrence.
- One reading, then reset: Triggers once, then won't trigger again until the reading clears the threshold and crosses it again, which avoids repeat alerts while a condition stays active.
- Multiple readings: Requires multiple readings to cross the threshold (for example, 3 of the last 5), reducing false positives from a transient spike. Recommended for most warning-level conditions.
- A reading longer than: Triggers only once a condition persists for a set duration, which is useful for something like sustained high temperature.
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Conditions: Optionally add a condition to refine when the rule runs. For example, limit it to production hours, or to when the asset's status is Online.
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Actions: Choose what MaintainX should do. For warning-level conditions, select Create a Request. For critical conditions, select Create a Work Order. Select Settings on the action to set how often it can re-run. For condition-based triggers, consider a longer interval to avoid duplicate tasks while a signal stays above threshold.
Step 3: Validate Your Automation​
Before expanding to your full asset list, pilot the automation on one or two assets using a single condition type, ideally one where you can observe real signal behavior over a few days. Confirm that:
- Requests or work orders are created at the right threshold values.
- The automation isn't re-triggering repeatedly for a condition that's continuously above threshold.
- The generated request or work order's description includes the condition and threshold that triggered it, so a technician can act on it without checking the source meter.
Check the automation's Action History to review every run, skip, and failure, along with timestamps and links to any work orders created. Once you're satisfied, duplicate the automation and adjust it for additional assets, condition types, or severity tiers.
Reconcile Your Automation and Your Calendar-Based Maintenance Plans​
Condition-based automations and calendar-based maintenance plans are separate mechanisms, so you can't convert one directly into the other. A condition-based automation doesn't necessarily replace every calendar-based preventive maintenance task for an asset.
Whether a condition-based automation can replace a given preventive maintenance task depends on whether the condition you're monitoring covers the same failure modes the task was written to catch. Use the following phases to decide whether an existing plan still needs to run at its current frequency, or at all.
Run the Automation Alongside Your Plan​
Keep the existing calendar-based maintenance plan running for the asset while you set up the condition-based automation for the same condition. The plan continues to generate its regular work orders while you confirm the automation catches what it's supposed to.
Confirm the Automation Works​
Pilot the automation as described in Step 3: Validate Your Automation. Keep the calendar-based plan running during the pilot as a safety net in case the automation misses something.
Decide Whether to Keep, Adjust, or Delete the Plan​
Once the automation reliably catches the condition at the right threshold, review whether the calendar-based plan is still providing value. If the automation covers what the plan was catching, you can delete the calendar-based maintenance plan for that asset. Deleting a plan is reversible, so you can restore it if you need to fall back to the calendar schedule. If the plan also covers failure modes the automation doesn't, keep it in place or adjust its frequency to complement the automation instead of duplicating it.
Known Limitations​
When setting up condition-based maintenance, be mindful of the following known limitations:
- Multi-meter conditions aren't supported yet. Each automation evaluates one meter at a time, so you can't currently combine conditions (for example, temperature above 80°C AND vibration above 12 mm/s) in a single trigger.
- MaintainX can't calculate a value from meter data yet. If your use case needs a calculated value, such as a rate of change or a ratio between two tags, calculate it upstream in your data source before it reaches MaintainX.
Common Issues​
Watch for the following common issues as you configure and monitor condition-based maintenance:
- Poorly tuned thresholds: A threshold set too close to the normal operating range generates a high volume of low-value tasks. Start conservatively and adjust based on real signal behavior and technician feedback.
- Transient spikes: A short-lived anomaly, such as a brief temperature spike during startup, can trigger an automation unnecessarily. Use Multiple readings or A reading longer than to filter these out.
- Sustained conditions: If an asset stays above a threshold for an extended period, MaintainX continues to act based on your configured re-run interval. Set that interval appropriately, and use conditions to prevent duplicate work from stacking up.
- Asset mapping errors: If a meter is mapped to the wrong asset, requests and work orders are misrouted. Verify your tag mappings before going live.
- Startup and transition states: Some assets show abnormal readings during startup, cooldown, or mode transitions that don't reflect a real maintenance need. Configure your automations to exclude these periods where possible.