A route for vibration programs is the order in which machines that need to have vibration data collected on them have that data collected. To be able to optimize the data collection time and effort, the best practice is to have multiple routes. The machines in the route should be listed in a strategic and time saving list. If you were walking through the plant, which machines would be reached first, second, third, and so forth. The order of the routes themselves is very important as well and the time it takes to gather the data. If some machines (such as slow speed gearboxes) take a lot longer to collect data on, then perhaps a separate route might be needed just for them.

If the routes are not in a logical order then additional time is needed on the instrument to select the correct machine to start data collection. While 10 seconds might not seem that long to select the correct machine, if you have 200 machines on a route it could easily take an additional 30 minutes to finish that route if it is not logically configured. Data collection on that one route each month for the entire year could quickly turn into 6 hours of wasted time. Most plants have multiple routes and this wasted time figure could increase very quickly.

Routes are only the list and sequence of the equipment and do not hold any data themselves (within the VibWorks systems) and can therefore easily be deleted and re-created as many times as needed.

Reviewing your routes yearly could assist in eliminating wasted time.