Motorblog

2 Motor Testing and CBM

Background on vendors for motor diagnostics technologies and consideration.

VP, Electrical Reliability Group
T-Solutions, Inc.

The Vendors

There are may vendors who will present their technology as the ‘Holy Grail’ of motor testing, or even motor management.  There are specific tips and marketing tricks to help direct you into believing their point of view.  The good news is that most of the new technologies are valid with ‘new’ meaning ‘within the past 25 years.’

There is also a lot of technology and vendor in-fighting, which is unfortunate.  The reason is that there is a growing number of ‘distruptive’ technologies, or, technologies that change how we have done business in the past.  The older technologies fight back (mostly mud-slinging) because their monopolies are in danger.

Some of the vendors will use tactics such as fear that you will fail in your job without their tool, will present every problem as a nail that their particular hammer will solve, or, fearing that you may go some other direction, will generate enough confusion that making no decision becomes the apparent safest direction.

In recent times, I have experienced dealing with all of these issues.  For example: As the figurehead for a relatively new technology, I was the object of significant mudslinging from an entrenched technology vendor.  I was disappointed, originally, by their actions, but started having fun with some of the pseudo-science being presented by them as fact.  What disturbed me most was that marketing information was being presented as engineering fact, as well.  Of particular fun, however, was when one of the leading engineers attempted to convince me that I was not seeing what I and thousands of users, of the technology I represented, were directly observing!  I gues reality is not a requirement in this kind of science.  The best part was that every negative presentation, etc., was seen through by most participants and my sales numbers would increase after every negative attack was made by the others.  Goes to show that the human spirit does not put up with this type of negative attitude.

I have observed others attempting to build programs around technology.  This, of course, is not the best direction to take for success (carrying your hammer and assuming every screw is a nail).  In reality, the program and the requirements and impacts of the system should be dictating the technologies (if any) to be used.

My intent in this part of the lecture series is to perform a review of technology and define the basic pass/fail criteria of each.  The objective is to provide you with the knowledge to provide/select technologies that will help you with your system.

As a final comment, I have found that most vendors, representatives and salesmen are honest in their dealings.  Your key issue should be ensuring that you are selecting the most effective technologies for your program.