Reliability-Centered Maintenance RCM
RCM has been proven within aviation and more recently within industry to deliver significant performance improvements. It should be noted however that to complete a thorough RCM analysis will take significant time and resource particularly in the initial stages of the process.
To this end it is recommended that an RCM analysis is carried out first on the most critical assets to gain 'quick wins' by developing a strategy for assets which have the greatest affect on operations when a failure occurs.
Completing a RCM assessment for an entire facility will result in many assets having multiple failure modes and subsequent proposed tasks being identified.
An average size modern manufacturing facility will have in excess of 1,500 main assets and possibly 4,000 sub assets, thus a tremendous amount of effort will accompany the RCM assessment.
To manage this it is the recommendation of Strategic Maintenance Planning that a suitable (CMMS) Computerised Maintenance Management System is installed such as HolisTech™ as it will offer a structured database for recording asset information and scheduling tasks.
The RCM Process
The RCM process is a structured methodology which may be applied to plant and equipment to determine the most appropriate maintenance strategy. To gain the most from the process the RCM analysis should be carried out by a team which systematically answers seven key questions to include;
- What are the functions and associated performance standards of the asset in its present operating context?
- In what way does it fail to fulfil its functions?
- What causes each functional failure?
- What happens when each failure occurs?
- In what way does each failure matter?
- What can be done to predict or prevent each failure?
- What should be done if a suitable proactive task cannot be found?
The questions are answered systematically for each asset and the answers determine what maintenance regime is appropriate. This approach, when applied to all of an organisation's assets ensures that time, effort and money is used in the best way possible. This is because each asset has exactly the correct amount and type of maintenance carried out upon it.
RCM and Strategic Maintenance Planning Ltd
Strategic Maintenance Planning recognise the importance of ensuring each asset is dealt with according to the impact its failure would have on a company and have developed a structured, comprehensive, yet simple methodology to determine which maintenance regime is most appropriate for a particular asset.
A methodology based on Reliability-centered Maintenance can objectively determine the correct maintenance regime for a particular asset.
Strategic Maintenance Planning process ensures that:
- The definition of an appropriate maintenance regime for each asset is achieved in a structured and objective manner
- Time, effort, resources and spending can be directed to the right places
- Maintenance Regimes can be agreed between all involved functional disciplines
- Regimes can be periodically reviewed to ensure they have not been affected by the changing business environment
- Everybody knows the business priorities
Overall the process employed by Strategic Maintenance Planning can help YOUR organisation improve the effectiveness of its maintenance.
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