Manufacturing organizations are under increasing pressure to meet customer and corporate demands by implementing improved maintenance initiatives to reduce costs, improve equipment availability, and protect against failure of critical equipment. Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) is widely accepted and used as a financially effective maintenance strategy which is used to anticipate equipment or component failure. Recent technological advances in component sensitivities, size reductions, and most importantly, cost has opened up an entirely new area of diagnostics. The economic benefit of CBM is achieved if the approach to maintenance is applied to the right equipment and through appropriate tools. In particular the degradation behavior of the equipment needs to be understood to correctly deploy a CBM approach and specific actions to specific equipment or components. Failure modes can be applied to support and optimise the decision making process. Using failure modes can be an efficient low-risk tool process for the prevention of problems, and is referred to as a deductive technique that consists of failure identification in each component. However, the literature is limited regarding the importance and the role of various failure models in different industrial sectors. Thus, if failure models are not known, understood and utilised correctly the use of CBM will not lead to financial benefits. The paper examines the relationship between the failure patterns observed in industrial maintenance practice and the corresponding impact on adoption and potential benefits of Condition-Based Maintenance (CBM). The paper will explain the need for accurate and up to date equipment information to support the correct maintenance approach. The paper suggests the importance of further supporting such investments by appropriately addressing the need to collect relevant data as a basis upon which to make the right decisions.