I had a conference call this morning with some potential clients in regard to rolling out a RCM Blitz™ effort. The sad thing about Reliability Centered Maintenance is the reputation the tool has acquired over the last 40 years has one of two faces.
The sad, tragic and more popular face is that if the Resource Consuming Monster. The reputation that RCM is too detailed, that it takes too long, and that by the time you finish your analysis there are no recourses and there is no money left for implementation. According to a survey conducted on ReliabilityWeb.com nearly 70% of all RCM implementations fail, with statistics like this, it is a wonder the tool still exists.
The second face of RCM is one of success. This is the Reliability Centered Maintenance that F. Stanley Nowlan and Howard S. Heap introduced the world to in 1978. The RCM process that improves equipment and process reliability while reducing health, safety and environmental incidents and accidents.
This is also the face of Reliability Centered Maintenance we introduce our customers to when they commit to training RCM Blitz™ facilitators or invite one of our facilitators in to perform a RCM analysis. Our customers know the real face of RCM because we take the time to share experience in what it takes to be successful in Reliability Centered Maintenance.
The First Key Step to Successful RCM
1) We start with a plan. While most companies begin by selling their training or services, we know every successful RCM effort starts with a plan because every one of our customers is different. Just look at the following different scenarios;
– Company A needs a quick win to get some buy-in from upper management.
– Company B believes they would like to train their own internal RCM facilitators.
– Company C has support to start a RCM effort and they believe they would like to have our facilitators lead each analysis.
– Company D has had three major incidents on a critical piece of equipment in the last year and they would like to perform a RCM on that asset as soon as possible.
– Company E has tried to make RCM a part of their culture in the past, they now have a new manager who again wants to use RCM to develop their maintenance strategies.
– Company F would like to get started with a RCM program but they only have support from the maintenance side of the business. The operations manager has stated that he will not supply people from his part of the business for the analysis.
– Company G has made contact and their new reliability manager attended a conference and wants them to learn about RCM. They have no idea what reliability centered maintenance is and why he thinks they need it.
While the 7 scenarios listed above might be a bit confusing, for the RCM leaders at Allied Reliability Group this is a normal part of the RCM Blitz cycle.
Determine Customer Needs – Work with the customer to determine their needs and continue to work with the customer to develop a plan for success that fits their present work culture. This plan will include full disclosure in regard to the people, time and resources required to ensure a successful effort. A plan that details from day 1 how we will select assets for analysis, how we estimate the time it takes to complete each analysis, individuals, priorities and due dates for implementation and most important, a plan that clearly shows how we plan to measure and prove return on investment.
If you RCM effort doesn’t start with a plan, you can plan on it being included in the 70% of RCM efforts that fail!
To learn about RCM Blitz™ and the key steps for RCM success feel free to contact me at plucknetted@alliedreliability.com or call 585-329-7040
Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) is the process that is used to determine the most effective approach to maintenance. It involves identifying actions that, when taken, will reduce the probability of failure and which are the most cost effective. It seeks the optimal mix of Condition-Based Actions, other Time or Cycle-Based actions, or a Run-to-Failure approach. RCM is an ongoing process that gathers data from operating systems performance and uses this data to improve design and future maintenance. These maintenance strategies, rather than being applied independently, are integrated to take advantage of their respective strengths in order to optimize facility and equipment operability and efficiency while minimizing life-cycle costs.
The RCM analysis carefully considers the following questions:
1. What does the system or equipment do; what is its function?
2. What functional failures are likely to occur?
3. What are the likely consequences of these functional failures?
4. What can be done to reduce the probability of the failure, identify the onset of failure, or reduce the consequences of the failure?