It’s every facility manager’s nightmare: a catastrophic failure where one of the plant’s critical production assets fails without warning and causes secondary damage to an attached asset. Production is stopped, and revenues are in jeopardy. Industrial facilities may have hundreds of rotating assets such as motors, pumps, fans, compressors, and gearboxes. It can be a complex task to ensure they’re all healthy and running properly. This paper looks at four common causes of failure in rotating assets and addresses how condition monitoring can be used to prevent failure. Sensors that detect temperature rise and vibration abnormalities can monitor critical assets on a continuous basis, preventing that nightmare scenario.