5 Thoughts That Can Drive Success with Reliability Centered Maintenance and Equipment Maintenance Plans

1.   You can not do RCM on every asset or all at once. Break it down into manageable chunks of your asset list based on risk to the business. Create a plan. Consider a tiered process for building maintenance strategies based on asset criticality. 

One example might be:

• Top critical asset use Full blown RCM Analysis
• Upper mid criticality assets use Failure Modes Effects Analysis (FMEA) or its simplified version SFMEA to identify failure modes based on operating context
• Middle to lower criticality use failure mode libraries or database tools

2.    Once you understand your common failure modes from RCM or FMEA, focus on mapping the Predictive Maintenance (PdM) technologies currently deployed at your site to the failure modes exhibited. This will reduce the number of Preventive maintenance (PM) task required and the total cost of the asset management plan. PdM normally takes less time, does not induce failures, and allows for the equipment to be running as opposed to invasive PM activities which require equipment shutdowns and can induce infant mortality.

3.    Schedule a standing meeting to tackle one RCM or section of an RCM or FMEA per week per group. It should be on your maintenance schedule and be as sacred to those scheduled to attend as your PM work. Create a project plan based the number of teams, the process you are using and the number of resource hours you have based on the weekly meetings.

4.   In all but your most safety, environmental, and production critical assets, the plans developed don't have to be perfect. Get them close and use continuous improvement techniques to refine the RCM and the asset management plan over time. This will allow you to implementing sooner and generating results faster. It also removes you from the world of analysis paralysis.

5. Stay focused and stay the course. It takes time. Reward your teams success. Support them and remove barriers to their sucess. 

I wish you luck as you tackle RCM and lower your risk and cost!