Review of prognostic problem in condition-based maintenance

Prognostic is nowadays recognized as a key feature in maintenance strategies as it should allow avoiding inopportune maintenance spending. Real prognostic systems are however scarce in industry. That can be explained from different aspects, on of them being the difficulty of choosing an efficient technology: many approaches to support the prognostic process exist, whose applicability is highly dependent on industrial constraints. Thus, the general purpose of the paper is to explore the way of performing failure prognostics so that manager can act consequently. Different aspects of prognostic are discussed. The prognostic process is (re)defined and an overview of prognostic metrics is given. Following that, the “prognostic approaches” are described. The whole aims at giving an overview of the prognostic area, both from the academic and industrial points of views.