Articles

What makes Failure Effects so powerful in Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM)?

In this video, I dive into step four of the RCM process: writing Failure Effects. I explain how these “little stories” of what happens if we do nothing to predict or prevent a failure mode are essential for assessing consequences—whether they impact safety, the environment, operations, or have non-operational consequences.

I also share a real-world example from the nuclear industry, where identifying specific operating restrictions in a failure effect uncovered an opportunity to improve reliability by rethinking how procedures impact operations.

Writing failure effects isn’t just about documenting failure—it’s about uncovering opportunities to improve your reliability.

Can Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) reduce proactive maintenance? The answer is: It depends.

In this video, I share real-world examples of organizations that reduced proactive maintenance by over 50% after implementing RCM. But there’s more to the story—what if your organization is reactive and struggling with downtime? In that case, RCM might actually increase proactive maintenance to improve reliability and reduce chronic issues.

The key is to focus on identifying proactive maintenance tasks that are technically appropriate and worth doing. RCM helps ensure your equipment serves you reliably, whether that means reducing or increasing proactive maintenance.