on Maintenance Reliability

Reliability Centered Maintenance methods compliant with the SAE standard JA-1011 (“Evaluation Criteria for RCM Processes”) all have common features – they must, or they won’t comply with the standard. Those requirements are “minimum” requirements, as they are with any standard. RCM-R complies. But what makes it different and why?

The RCM standard and most, if not all, of the established RCM methods are firmly rooted in the past as it was defined by those few individuals who wrote the SAE standard. The standard and those methods have stood the test of time because they work, but we asked, “Can they work better?” Answer – yes. [Read more…]

RCM-R® goes beyond what RCM alone can do. The basic successful method as defined in SAE JA-1011 remains intact. RCM-R® enhances that method, linking it to international standards for risk management and adding a degree of technical rigor rarely seen outside of the military, nuclear and aircraft industries. It adds a great deal of emphasis on what it takes to implement the method successfully – not only as a project (as has so often been done with other RCM methods), but as a sustainable program, and on leveraging the analysis results to maximize value generation and align closely with the intentions and precepts of the new international standard for Asset Management, ISO 55001. [Read more…]

Uptime now goes Beyond Maintenance Management. 

Maintenance, is already a big enough challenge for many of us, yet beyond lies the realm of Asset Management. Back in 2004, As the second edition of Uptime was being written, the UK was introducing a specification for Asset Management and requiring network utilities to implement it. Drivers included the justification of rates charged to customers by these natural monopolies, the need to convince regulators that good asset management was indeed being practiced and to avoid failures that were increasingly becoming more serious and more publicized. The UK’s Publicly Available Specifications, PAS 55-1 and -2, were the first in this field. Those specifications underwent revision a few years later (2008) and early implementations were successful. The Institute of Asset Management (IAM) in the UK became the primary proponent of PAS 55 and the driving force behind a movement to create a new international standard. Along the way various documents were written to explain asset management and various national and international groups were formed to promote good asset management – some from national groups that were focused predominantly on maintenance. [Read more…]