Reliability Centered Maintenance Principles

Reliability Centered Maintenance principles provide a function-based system for building a physical asset care program. Rather than replacing components on a set schedule whether they need it or not, RCM identifies those that affect equipment function. This allows maintenance crews to focus on avoiding the consequences of the failure of those components, ensuring that plant operations can continue unabated. 

Implementing Reliability Centered Maintenance principles involves looking at all the various ways equipment can fail, identifying what causes the failure, and working to find ways to minimize its effects or eliminate the potential entirely. If that sounds overwhelming, that’s because it is. RCM is not a fast or simple process, but it is crucial for optimal production.

At Maintenance Innovators, Inc. we have spent decades helping businesses implement this practice with our workshops and consulting efforts.

Will RCM Work In Our Facility? 

It is likely that you ended up reading this blog because you have been asked to research Reliability Centered Maintenance principles to gain a better understanding of its use and benefit.  This is a series of positions that you should answer honestly ‘yes’ to if RCM is going to be right for you:

• Our current Preventive Maintenance (PM) program and practice do not follow a standard methodology or universal standard.
• Our PM tasks were created haphazardly, most likely by maintenance supervisors or planners, using the OEM’s (Original Equipment Manufacturer) recommendations as a guideline.
• The components we are performing PM on are the same components that are failing.
• Our storeroom does not always have the part we need when we need it.
• We can’t seem to get all of our PM tasks done, usually because production won’t give us the equipment or our technicians keep getting pulled away for ‘emergencies.’
• Our PM activities are not a core value driver of our business and are not seen as value-added by production.
• The ‘maintenance’ of equipment at our facility is seen as the sole function of the maintenance department

If all or most of these things are true for your operation, then RCM is probably the right methodology for you. This approach is ideal for the practical improvement of critical plant assets, or when planning for the installation of a new piece of equipment. 

Reliability Centered Maintenance Principles Workshops

At Maintenance Innovators, Inc. we will guide you to excellence in your RCM practice. RCM is typically handled as a workshop. After some training to align our thinking, we will work on:

• Creating an asset registry (if one already exists, we’ll update as needed)
• Selecting a single asset to start with
• Forming, chartering, and training a small RCM team of associates who would normally have responsibilities around that asset.
• Creating a process map of the asset.
• Systematically answering all seven of the Reliability Centered Maintenance questions:
  • What are the functions required of the asset?
  • In what ways can it fail?
  • What are the causes of failure?
  • What happens when each failure occurs?
  • How does each failure matter?
  • What can be done to prevent each failure?
  • What should be done if a failure (or its consequence) cannot be prevented through maintenance?

A successful Reliability Centered Maintenance workshop also nearly always includes a frank and open conversation about storeroom support for the assets. 

We are eager to work with you as a valued partner to teach reliability centered maintenance principles that deliver the critical guarding of your asset’s inherent reliability anywhere in the world. The results of your RCM should set the standard for asset care strategy development at your facility. Click here or call (913) 633-4009 today!

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