How to Build a Machine Health Scoring System for Manufacturing: From Raw Sensor Data to Actionable Scores
· 9 min read
A maintenance manager walks into the daily production meeting. The plant manager asks: "How are our machines doing?"
The honest answer — "Well, the hydraulic pump on Press 4 is showing elevated vibration in the 3× RPM harmonic, suggesting possible misalignment, and the spindle motor on CNC-7 has been drawing 12% more current than baseline, which could indicate bearing degradation, and..." — puts the room to sleep by sentence two.
What the plant manager actually wants is a number. A score. A simple indicator that says: this machine is healthy, this one needs attention, this one is going to break.
That's what a machine health scoring system provides. Here's how to build one that's practical, accurate, and actually used.