Predictive maintenance, on the other hand, is a condition-driven preventative maintenance program, instead of relying on industrial or in-plant average life statistics to schedule maintenance activities, predictive maintenance uses direct condition monitoring techniques which determine operating condition, efficiency, heat distribution and other indicators to determine the actual time to failure or loss of efficiency that would be detrimental to the plant or facility.

This program now provides factual information on actual operating conditions of critical assets, including efficiency, as well as the actual mechanical condition.

Now maintenance management has the factual information to effectively plan and schedule maintenance activities.

It should be noted, however, that predictive maintenance is not vibration testing or thermal imaging, it is a philosophy or attitude that simply stated uses actual operating conditions of plant equipment and systems to optimize total plant operation.

Further, predictive maintenance is an integrated approach to condition monitoring and includes thermography and vibration analysis. A comprehensive predictive maintenance program utilizes a combination of cost-effective tools, including thermal imaging, vibration monitoring and other non-destructive testing methods, to obtain actual operating conditions of critical plant systems.

If we look at some of the benefits of predictive maintenance we can see that:
	We can minimize unscheduled breaks in production
	We can identify problems before they become critical
	Major repairs can be prevented if a problem is detected early
	Repaired equipment is in acceptable condition
	Could eliminate 33% to 50% of maintenance expenditure
	Improves the life span of critical equipment