• Run to Break: This strategy, which is outdated in many industries, is based on letting the equipment work as long as it works and fixing it when it breaks.
• Preventive Maintenance: This strategy is still used in many industries and is based on the fact that periodically the entire equipment is stopped and inspected. In this inspection, the consumable parts are replaced periodically and the more expensive equipment is visually inspected to ensure their correct operation. The disadvantage of this method is the high cost due to the stoppage of production lines and the high consumption of consumable parts, but instead it prevents costly events that are suddenly caused by the first strategy.

• Predictive Maintenance: This strategy is more recent than the other two, and permanently or periodically monitors the condition of the machine from various directions such as vibration level, oil analysis, efficiency or working temperature. By using these signs and checking their history, the current state and prediction of the future state of the equipment is obtained. Contrary to initial expectation, predictive maintenance significantly reduces maintenance costs over time by as much as 60% compared to the other two strategies.

Vibration analysis is one of the most important methods in the predictive maintenance strategy because it can detect many equipment faults online and, for example, like oil analysis, a few days do not pass between sampling and obtaining the result. Another advantage of vibration analysis is that many defects have vibration effects or so-called vibration signatures. Therefore, the majority of equipment defects can be detected by this method.

For equipment that is important and sensitive, vibration protection devices should be used to immediately warn and turn off the device if their vibrations increase excessively. For the rest of the equipment, data is periodically collected from specified points by the data collector device, and this information is recorded in the software provided with the analyzer, and the history of vibrations is monitored.

Various accelerometers, including network accelerometers and general accelerometers, along with vibration protection devices and data collectors, can be used to monitor the condition of machines.