The 9 Deadly myths of Reliability-centered Maintenance

This article is part of a ten part series of posts looking to expose some of th emyths surrounding RCM in modern asset management. Unfortunately as the method becomes more and more popular the list of detractors gets longer and longer. Often with the result of making poor practice common practice.

Since it was popularized at the beginning of the 1990’s, Reliability-centered Maintenance (RCM) has had its fair share of detractors as well as supporters. While some objections have been justified, many are the result of misunderstandings, misinformation, or misapplication of the concepts and techniques.

In the past many approaches with little or nothing to do with the original report by Stanley Nolan and Howard Heap, were often promoted as RCM processes. This contributed greatly to some of the confusion around today. However, with the publication in 1999 of the RCM Standard, SAE JA1011, companies now have the means of determining whether a process is or is not an RCM process prior to implementing it.

Despite the publication and widespread adoption of this standard the “noise” regarding RCM has continued. Often this has been the result of bad prior implementation experiences, but in some cases it is a deliberate effort by those with commercial interests in the area.

This has had three, mainly negative, impacts globally;

• Many companies who could have benefited greatly from implementing RCM have been discouraged from doing so.

• In an attempt to continue obtaining some of the benefits offered by implementing rigorous RCM, many streamlined, or cut down versions have appeared. While some of these do achieve some of the benefits of RCM, some of these methods are actively counterproductive and even dangerous.

• Lastly, many “new” techniques have appeared in areas where RCM could easily have been applied with great effect. This has served to reinforce artificial work barriers, as well as to create even further disconnection in asset management approaches.

Many of these “myths” have created the unfortunate situation where inefficient and sometimes dangerous approaches are accepted as leading practice.

The intention of this paper is to scrutinize some of the myths and legends that have sprung up around RCM.

Myth 1. RCM requires a lot of resources to implement and maintain

This is by far the most common of the statements made regarding RCM. Unfortunately it has a basis in fact.

Since it was popularized in the early 1990’s it has been sold to the asset maintenance community as a method that could only be properly implemented via a facilitated group. This required many of the leading people to be off line, sometimes for weeks at a time, running through the seven questions that make up the method.

In fact, when people talk today about “classical” RCM they are often referring to this mode of implementation, rather than any specific methodology. In fact, this paradigm alone is responsible for many of the streamlined versions of the method that exist today.

Fortunately, it is totally false.

That RCM requires the input of knowledgeable professionals for the assets under consideration is not in question. It is ludicrous to seriously consider that one person, no matter how expert, could have all of the information to perform an accurate analysis.

But there is no way in the lean companies of today that the most knowledgeable professionals can be taken offline to sit through an analysis, let alone an entire implementation project. In fact trying to continue with this outdated practice usually leads to:

• Less knowledgeable people being assigned to the team, or no representation at all. Watering down the rigorous nature of the analysis.

• Expertise for the analysis being limited to the professionals within the room, rather than the wider group of professionals existing in the outside world.

• Large period of inactivity and boredom by participants when they are working through areas not related to their expertise.

Of all the above problems with this outdated approach it is the final one that frustrated me the most when implementing RCM in this fashion. Often the functional definitions involve everybody, while failure modes are driven mainly by maintainers and failure effects mainly by operators.

A more practical approach this to use a combination of short duration facilitated workshops, targeted interviews (One on One, One on two etcetera) and make full use of the RCM facilitator in more of an analytical role.

Another tool that modern technology has enabled is that of rapid implementation templates, technique that allows the Analyst to maintain the level of rigor, while speeding up the process dramatically.

The result is a facilitated process, rather than a facilitated workshop. Experience shows that this approach can often reduce the resource requirement by operational professionals by up to 60%, while maintaining the rigor that any reliability process should have.

This is an entirely different role than that of an RCM facilitator and it requires a different more precise skill set. One that focuses on investigation and the application of logic, as well as the skills required for rapid and accurate facilitation.

This is the first in a ten-part series of articles looking to expose some of the myths and legends surrounding RCM. If it has been of interest or use to you I hope you would recommend this page to a co-worker or colleague.

Myth 2. RCM should only be applied to critical assets
Myth 3. RCM is only for rotating equipment not for static equipment
Myth 4. RCM does not support whole-of-life asset management
Myth 5. RCM requires large amounts of data before it can commence