RCM with Nancy Regan

RCM principles have been around for nearly 50 years now, and its process for nearly 40 years. Surprisingly, there is still a wide misconception and most people still don’t understand the term that is RCM. So, what is RCM or Reliability-Centered Maintenance? RCM is one of the most efficient and effective proactive maintenance processes that is considered one of the most powerful asset management tools. One of the great things about RCM is that you can apply it to any industry or your daily life. It has one of the most diverse applications in the world.

In this episode, we covered:

  • What RCM (Reliability-Centered Maintenance) is all about.
  • Why is RCM the preferred approach to establishing the proactive maintenance plan?
  • What are the advantages to using RCM over a standard FMEA or FMECA?
  • What are the disadvantages of RCM, if any.
  • Considerations when performing RCM analysis.
  • The 7 steps to performing RCM.
  • Evident vs “hidden” failure consequences.
  • And much more!

Now, the RCM process can be applied to the whole assets or any part or phase you may choose to implement it on. In simple words, you are developing a proactive maintenance plan that incorporates every single activity that you can perform. Although RCM allows you to devise solutions that are far beyond the maintenance aspect of things, most of the organizations don t think about the diversity of RCM principle. They just focus on running a successful asset management program when they can take advantage of RCM in every task they perform on a daily basis.

Then a lot of organizations think that Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA), Failure Modes Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA), and RCM are different things. They don t understand that they are parts of RCM s seven principles. When they are doing condition-based maintenance, they are implementing the principles of RCM that have been there for a long time. The seven principles of RCM are: Functions, Function Failures, Failure Modes, Failure Effects, Failure Consequences, Proactive Maintenance and Intervals, and Default Strategies. So, when you are doing FMEA, FMECA, or CBM (Condition-Based Mainteance), you are actually doing parts of RCM which is a whole bigger process.

The first step is the functions that incorporates all the tasks that you have to perform to keep your assets up and running. There will be problems due to which you won t be able to perform all those functions that you identified in the early stages. Each function has some failure mode designed against it. You have to just identify the failure mode. Where there are functions, there will be function failure too. You have to find the reason behind those failures and then analyze the effects that those failures might have on the assets.

These first five steps cover all the aspects of other techniques that are used in the organizations. After this, you need to come up with solutions that will allow you to stop those failures from occurring in the first place. That means less downtime and less cost. There are always multiple strategies against every failure mode. You have to implement the best ones by practicing and experimenting. You have to come up with a well-thought-out plan to successfully implement RCM because that is where most organizations fail. You need to pre-plan the detailed process and the people who can implement them.

 

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