An aspect of the present invention is to provide a system and method for predicting the remaining useful time of mechanical components such as bearings. Another aspect of the present invention is to provide a system and method for predicting the remaining useful time of bearings based on available condition monitoring data. Another aspect of the present invention is to provide a system and method for automatically deciding which columns of input information are the most significant for predicting the remaining useful life of bearings. Another aspect of the present invention is to provide a system and method for performing an analysis of both test bearings and training bearings and determining which training bearings are most similar to a given test bearing. Another aspect of the present invention is to provide a system and method for training an artificial neural network.