Management Philosophies: The Primary Principles of RCM Mainpac Address: Suite 201, 10 – 12 Clarke Street, Crows Nest, New South Wales, Australia 2065 Phone: +61 2 9779 1160
Reliability-Centred Maintenance (RCM) is a strategic decision-making framework organisations use to determine which maintenance tasks will give equipment the highest reliability for the minimum cost. It follows the work of Stanley Nolan and Howard Heap, titled “Reliability-centred Maintenance� published in 1978. RCM follows principles that aim to minimize errors and risk in the application of its best practices. RCM is: 1. Function-oriented- It seeks to preserve the equipment function, not just operability for operation’s sake. To illustrate, using a number of machineries doing the same function may seem redundant, but it increases life cycle and is more cost-effective. 2. System-focused - Rather than focusing on individual functions, RCM is concerned about maintaining system functions. 3. Reliability-centred - It treats failure statistics in an actuarial manner, which puts the relationship between operating age and the failures experienced as one the more important concerns rather than magnifying simple failure rate. 4. Acknowledges designs have limitations- Its objective is to maintain the reliability of the equipment as given by its design.RCM, however, recognises maintenance feedback can improve on the original design. That said RCM addresses the gap between the perceived and the actual design life of the system. 5. Driven by safety and cost-effectiveness - Safety and cost are related. RCM puts safety on top but never forgets cost-effectiveness. 6. Defines failure as any unsatisfactory condition- Therefore, failure is one or the other: a loss of function or a loss of acceptable quality. This means failure arises when a system stops operating or produces unacceptable outputs. 7. Use a logic tree to screen maintenance tasks - RCM follows a diagrammatic guide that depicts a consistent approach to all equipment maintenance. 8. Shouldbe applicable - The tasks must address the failure and its characteristics.
9. Should be effective- The tasks must lower the failure probability and be cost effective. 10. Acknowledges the types of maintenance tasks–RCM is conditiondirected, time-directed and failure finding. 11. A living system- It makes use of feedbacks for continuous improvement in the future. RCM is just one of the many maintenance and management solutions employed in major industries like engineering, construction and aviation. Professional management services solutions are benefitting from the innovation of RCM in improving customer’s management capabilities and practices.
Resources: http://www.mainpac.com.au/ http://reliabilityweb.com/index.php/articles/reliabilitycentered_maintenance_mindset_rcm2_the_cognitive_psychology_of_m/ http://www.rcmblitzblog.com/2014/01/17/10-things-your-equipmentoperators-can-do-to-improve-reliability/