Managing the Economic Storm

The world economic crisis has affected us in different ways, but the common theme in our industry is sustained interest in rethinking the way that we maintain complex systems.  Condition-based maintenance (CBM) is a proven method of scheduling maintenance or repair on an “as-needed” basis, rather than scheduling maintenance determined by elapsed hours of operation.   Increasingly, organizations are seeking ways to reduce their overall cost-of-ownership expenses using this CBM approach.  Enterprise Health Management (EHM) and CBM+ go beyond to link CBM to the critical aspects of logistics to further leverage the savings.

Ridgetop is proud to be the world leader in providing the enabling technologies necessary to implement these advanced initiatives in electronic systems. 

The potential savings possible through “prognostics-enabling” critical electronics have been discussed at recent meetings such as the Prognostics Health Management (PHM) Conference, EHM, and the PHMTech09 Workshop. 

There are viable solutions available now and others in process, to reduce these costs:

• Sentinel RingDown for power systems. Ridgetop’s innovative approach assesses the health of power systems using a non-intrusive impulse method. This technology has also been extended and deployed in electromechanical actuator systems.
• Sentinel SJ BIST for FPGAs, the most widely used programmable component in digital systems today. When integrated, this product helps pinpoint troublesome intermittencies occurring in degraded solder joints in electronic modules.
• Sentinel Software. Ridgetop provides the means to acquire and store data from complex systems, so that algorithm can be applied to extract the prognostic “signature” that precedes equipment failure.

Ridgetop’s role in helping its customers reduce costs would not be complete without the dedication of our outstanding staff of experienced engineers. I am very grateful to have such a powerful team working directly with our customers in providing enabling solutions in this area.

The economic storm creates new issues for all of us, but this storm will pass.  We are proud of our accomplishments in providing solutions to difficult problems.  We appreciate the confidence and past support of our customers. As Ridgetop grows, we welcome the opportunity to meet new customers and to address the new challenges their systems present. 

Sincerely,

Doug Goodman
Founder and CEO