In this book's introduction, the author points out that maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MR&O) works best in planned synergy with engine condition monitoring (ECMS), performance analysis (PA, in some cases managed as a component of ECMS), and performance (recovery or otherwise) testing. One may regard ECMS and MR&O as "chicken and egg" in that either may happen first in a plant's life, depending on the designer's grasp of maintenance philosophies. In Chapter 12, Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul, the author discusses maintenance philosophies. To reiterate briefly those are

• Reactive (do nothing until failure occurs).

• Preventive (do only what the OEM suggests in his manual, and if it does not work, you can blame the OEM, maybe).

• Predictive, also called on condition (keep an eye on the system via a comprehensive ECMS).

Yet another option, of which this author is not fond, considering the power unleashed in the case of catastrophic failure, such a turbomachinery case rupture, is "run to failure."

Nevertheless this has been done by operators such as those in refinery service who intend that their plant be shut down and abandoned when they run out of product to process or incur a failure in a critical plant location, whichever comes first.

In larger organizations today, the ECMS and MR&O functions are typically done by different people. Further, within MR&O, there are maintenance engineers, R&O engineers, and metallurgists. It then becomes critical that these various individuals communicate well. Since they may be working...