Predicting Asset Failure

Always good question to ask.  How can I accurately predict system failure and prepare for it?  Especially when failure is rare?  Failures can often cascade. We explored this in the manufacturing line space and collaborated with national lab manufacturing mathematicians to solve the problem. Now an announcement by IBM:   " ... Through IBM's predictive analytics software and business consulting services, the new solution harnesses big data from instrumented assets and identifies irregularities in the manufacturing process, spots product irregularities, and forecasts a range of asset performance risks before a problem ever arises.... ".  See the full press release.