I read your article that compares maintenance costs to RAV and am inquiring to see what is your definition of ‘maintenance cost’ when measuring replacement asset value? Are you strictly referring to labor costs, or is this the cost of labor, services and capital equipment purchases to repair, replace or upgrade an existing machine?

Dear Tom,

In the example, ‘maintenance costs’ meant the direct and overhead maintenance costs – labor, parts, subcontract services and allocated overheads (i.e. supervision, management, associated infrastructure, etc. proportioned to direct labor hours) – incurred during the ‘normal’ operation of the car (i.e. the car is driven by a well-trained, responsible driver at the wheel). If you have a store/warehouse for maintenance parts then you add the proportionate cost of keeping and running the store to support the maintenance effort as part of the total cost of maintenance.

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by Nancy Regan Leave a Comment

RCM Lesson from the Ancient Mayans

Discover the Secret to Reliability

Hi everyone! I’m Nancy Regan, and today I’m coming to you from the iconic pyramid of Chichen Itza in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. The ancient Mayans believed that their pyramid connected them to both the underworld and the sky—a symbol of balance and connection. This powerful idea got me thinking about Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) and the importance of leveraging our most valuable resource: equipment experts.

In this video, I’ll explain why equipment experts are crucial to the RCM process. They bring insights that historical data alone can’t provide, understanding how things fail, what causes them to fail, and how each failure matters —what we call consequences in RCM. Documenting their knowledge through RCM not only improves reliability but also preserves their invaluable expertise for the future.

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by James Reyes-Picknell Leave a Comment

Today’s Gremlin – I’ve got this!

Today’s Gremlin – “I’ve got this”, doesn’t cause trouble. In fact, he’s very motivated to keep things running smoothly. He’s good at what he does and he does keep things running. But, he’s a gremlin because he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. Sometimes, he is closed to new ideas, thinking he has been there, done that and seen it all, but doesn’t realize that he really hasn’t. What he knows, he puts to good use. What he doesn’t know is where the limitation arises.

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by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Ageless Maintenance and Reliability Success Secrets 5

Maintenance and reliability problems are not new. Our forefathers and ancestors understood the value of smart maintenance and high reliability. They learnt from experience and passed their knowledge down to us through parables, stories, and sayings. The timeless advice of our forbearers on successful maintenance and reliability is as applicable to us now as it has been to every generation since the dawn of civilisation.

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by George Williams Leave a Comment

Direction Setting: Guiding Your Team to Excellence

In this video, George Williams, Founder and CEO of Reliability X, dives into “Direction Setting,” a key component of the Leadership domain in the Maintenance and Reliability Best Practices Framework. Whether you’re leading an entire plant or managing a single department, this building block ensures your team is focused, efficient, and moving toward a common goal.

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by Nancy Regan Leave a Comment

RCM’s Hidden Power EXPOSED in Step 7

Hi everyone! In this video we use Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) principles. Yesterday, we poured the concrete floor for our metal building, and I learned that newly poured concrete faces a unique Failure Mode: Water evaporates too quickly during drying due to normal environmental conditions. This can lead to excessive cracks that compromise the strength of the structure.

In Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM), Step 7—Default Strategies—helps us determine how to manage specific Failure Modes that require unique actions. In this case, the solution is to keep the concrete wet for at least three days, and luckily, Mother Nature is giving us a hand this weekend!

Remember, RCM isn’t just about routine Proactive Maintenance. Sometimes, your equipment may need special, one-time actions or other Default Strategies to manage particular Failure Modes.

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by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Component Lifetime Health Strategy Based on Physics-of-Failure Science

Plant and Equipment Wellness (PEW) is a Physics of Failure based methodology for equipment failure prevention and defect elimination that results in the fewest activities, least resources and lowest expenditure to produce outstanding operational equipment reliability. PEW identifies the necessary business-wide processes and departmental actions an organisation needs to apply to get high plant and equipment availability. With high uptime comes more productivity, higher operating profits, and less capital expenditure.

As much as possible PEW uses simple techniques that can be done by shopfloor people. Most companies do not have large staffs of university trained maintenance and reliability professionals. They have knowledgeable and experienced maintenance practitioners that know their plant and equipment. PEW does not require specialist RAMS software that none but mathematicians can understand, that very few companies can afford to buy or contract, and requires assumptions about the future that are hopeful at best.

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by Nancy Regan 1 Comment

Reliability Centered Maintenance Explained

Hi everyone! Today, we’re pouring the concrete floor for our metal building, and it’s a perfect analogy for Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM). Just like this concrete forms a solid foundation that will support our structure for decades, RCM isn’t a quick fix or the program of the week. It’s about building a lasting foundation for your reliability efforts.

RCM takes time, the right people, and a commitment to the process to develop proactive maintenance tasks that truly make a difference. Build for the long term—invest in RCM and lay the groundwork for future reliability!

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by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Outstanding Maintenance and Reliability for Everyone

Maintenance And Reliability Like They Should Be Done!

What can a 25-year veteran of condition monitoring tell you about how to do better maintenance and get
better reliability?

First a little background. Max started his vibration analysis monitoring company back in the late 1970’s. He and his company developed expertise and technologies in condition monitoring over many years. They monitored and reported on a large range and number of machines, and worked for numerous companies. He and his people were the recognised experts in vibration monitoring and control. [Read more…]

by James Reyes-Picknell Leave a Comment

Today’s Gremlin – Sweat the Asset

Today’s Gremlin – “sweat the asset”, truly believes that running the plant and equipment as hard as possible is good for business. He couldn’t be more wrong!

This gremlin wants to produce more in a short time and runs the equipment at or even over its design capacity. In one plant in a big mine I met one of these – a production superintendent who believed he was doing his best when he ran the plant hard and just avoided tripping breakers! Running that hard increases stress on the equipment, often ends up in overloading it, and causes it to fail prematurely.

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by Joe Anderson Leave a Comment

The Necessity of Business Acumen in Maintenance

Maintenance professionals have long been regarded as the unsung heroes of organizational operations, ensuring machines run smoothly and assets remain productive. Yet, in today’s competitive business environment, the role of maintenance has expanded beyond just fixing what’s broken. To truly drive organizational success, maintenance leaders and teams must possess a strong sense of business acumen. This blend of operational expertise and strategic understanding allows them to align their efforts with overarching business goals, transforming maintenance from a cost center into a value-creating powerhouse.

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by Nancy Regan Leave a Comment

How to Assign Preventive Maintenance Task Intervals & Failure Consequences

RCM Case Study Part 3/4

Welcome to Part 3 of our in-depth RCM mini-series! In today’s video, we continue our dentist-inspired case study by exploring Failure Consequences and diving deep into the world of Preventive Maintenance. This session is packed with practical insights that reveal how to properly establish Preventive Maintenance tasks and their intervals.

What You’ll Learn:

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by André-Michel Ferrari 1 Comment

Reliability Software – Avoiding White Elephants

Introduction

Software packages and algorithms help speed up calculations in Reliability Engineering Analysis. And obviously in other specialties. They are known as Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Software. Preprogrammed formulas can be readily applied by the analyst to provide modeling results. Additionally, graphics and other informative visual representations can be obtained at a mouse click. This helps showcase issues in an operating environment. And lead to relevant action to address those issues. Our human brain has cognitive limitations when analyzing highly complex systems such as Reliability, Availability and Maintainability (RAM) Models. Software helps to overcome those limitations.

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by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Changing an EAM System for Operational Excellence Success

Any standard EAM system can be adapted to achieve Operational Excellence with the PWW EAM methodology.

Rather than going from policy to practice, Plant Wellness Way starts with how to create a healthy environment for parts microstructure when equipment is in-service. By focusing on creating healthy operating environments for components, machines, equipment, and plants, your operation will perform at world-class levels of reliability.

The standard range of Enterprise Asset Management models available will typically use an EAM Policy to decree the purposes of the EAM system. From this statement processes and practices necessary to achieve the EAM Policy aims are chosen. People will then aim to meet the policy requirements for their team or department without taking the flow on consequences into account. As a result, businesses will unintentionally create an EAM system that instils randomness and variability into the company. In this situation is it nearly impossible to create a system that achieves operational excellence success.

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by Nancy Regan Leave a Comment

Let’s get into Failure Modes and Failure Effects

RCM Case Study Part 2/4

In today’s video, we dive deep into the critical steps of Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM) by exploring Failure Modes and Failure Effects as part of our ongoing dentist-themed mini RCM case study. This is Part 2 of a four-part series designed to help you understand and apply RCM principles through relatable, real-world examples. What You’ll Learn:

Failure Modes: Discover why detailed Failure Modes are essential and how they guide us to the right proactive maintenance and default strategies.
Failure Effects: Learn how to write comprehensive Failure Effects that depict the worst-case scenarios if no action is taken to manage the Failure Mode.

Case Study Highlight: We’ll look at the specific Failure Mode of bacteria accumulation that leads to cavities and track the progression from the earliest signs of decay to severe health consequences if left untreated. This detailed look will help you see why writing Failure Effects is crucial for assessing failure consequences

Key Takeaways: How to identify and write precise Failure Modes that lead to effective maintenance strategies. The importance of documenting Failure Effects to understand the full impact of asset failures.

This is a must-watch for anyone looking to refine their RCM skills and apply them practically. Be sure to tune in tomorrow for Part 3, where we’ll explore Failure Consequences and Preventive Maintenance!

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