Predictive maintenance is a subject of great interest to U.S. industry, to the academic community, and to employers in the region of suburban Chicago served by the college. In response to the needs of the business and industrial communities it serves, the college has created an eight-course, 23-credit Predictive Maintenance (PDM) certificate program to provide basic education in this emerging field of work at the technician level. The PDM certificate combines four newly developed courses with four existing courses in the college's Electro-Mechanical Technology curriculum. The eight courses range from the basics in industrial electricity and technical mechanics to advanced techniques in signal analysis and statistical process control. Collectively, the courses provide fundamental education in predicative, corrective, and preventive maintenance and a significant amount of hands-on experience using the data acquisition systems and industrial monitoring instrumentation. The primary target population for the PDM program is composed of individuals who are already employed in the field and who are interested in improving their knowledge and skill levels in order move to higher level jobs in industrial maintenance. Critical to the implementation of the PDM program is the addition of equipment for an integrated system that can provide hands-on experience in using state-of-the-art data acquisition systems and industrial monitoring instrumentation. *
