This paper presents an inter-turn short-circuit of permanent magnet synchronous machine (PMSM) operating under the direct field oriented control. A new simple method to detect stator windings incipient damage and to classify the fault severities is proposed for PMSM. This strategy is based on a fault indicator defined as the sum's square of the stator currents values in phases a, b and c. To show the effectiveness of the proposed fault indicator some simulation results using LabVIEW are presented.