Purpose-The purpose of this paper is mainly to highlight how a simplified and streamlined approach to the condition monitoring (CM) of industrial rotating machines through the application of frequency domain data combination can effectively enhance the eMaintenance framework. Design/methodology/approach-The paper commences by providing an overview to the relevance of maintenance excellence within manufacturing industries, with particular emphasis on the roles that rotating machines CM of rotating machines plays. It then proceeds to provide details of the eMaintenance as well as its possible alignment with the introduced concept of effective vibration-based condition monitoring (eVCM) of rotating machines. The subsequent sections of the paper respectively deal with explanations of data combination approaches, experimental setups used to generate vibration data and the theory of eVCM. Findings-This paper investigates how a simplified vibration-based rotating machinery faults classification method based on frequency domain data combination can increase the feasibility and practicality of eMaintenance. Research limitations/implications-The eVCM approach is based on classifying data acquired under several experimentally simulated conditions on two different machines using combined higher order signal processing parameters so as to reduce CMdata requirements. Although the current study was solely based on the application of vibration data acquired from rotating machines, the knowledge exchange platform that currently dominates present day scientific research makes it very likely that the lessons learned from the development of eVCM concept can be easily transferred to other scientific domains that involve continuous CM such as medicine. Practical implications-The concept of eMaintenance as a cost-effective and smart means of increasing the autonomy of maintenance activities within industries is rapidly growing in maintenance-related literatures. As viable as the concept appears, the achievement of its optimum objectives and full deployment to the industry is still subjective due to the complexity and data intensiveness of conventional CM practices. In this paper, an eVCM approach is proposed so that rotating machine faults can be effectively detected and classified without the need for repetitive analysis of measured data. Social implications-The main strength of eVCM lies in the fact that it permits the sharing of historical vibration data between identical rotating machines irrespective of their foundation structures and speed differences. Since eMaintenance is concerned with driving maintenance excellence, eVCM can potentially contribute towards its optimisation as it cost-effectively streamlines faults diagnosis. This therefore implies that the simplification of vibration-based CM of rotating machines positively impacts the society with regard to the possibility of reducing how much time is actually spent on the accurate detection and classification of faults. Originality/value-Although the currently existing body of literature already contains studies that have attempted to show how the combination of measured vibration data from several industrial machines can be used to establish a universal vibration-based faults diagnosis benchmark for incorporation into eMaintenance framework, these studies are limited in the scope of faults, severity and rotational speeds considered. In the current study, the concept of multi-faults, multi-sensor, multi-speed and multi-rotating machine data combination approach using frequency domain data fusion and principal components analysis is presented so that faults diagnosis features for identical rotating machines with different foundations can be shared between industrial plants. Hence, the value of the current study particularly lies in the fact that it significantly highlights a new dimension through which the practical implementation and operation of eMaintenance can be realized using big data management and data combination approaches. © Emerald Publishing Limited.
