RCM Toolkit finds a new home

Sneaking under the radar in last week's press releases was an announcement by a IFS Defence in the UK defence sector that it had purchased a company called International Science Consultants. (ISC)

IFS Defence is a joint venture by IFS AB and BAE systems and focusses on technology and services for the asset management of the UK's Defence forces.

The announcement is significant for those involved in the international reliability community because it highlights the last word in the disintegration of the Reliability-centered maintenance consultancy and brand forged by the late John Moubray.

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Despite the many variations of RCM that are out in the marketplace (both compliant and non-compliant) RCM2 remains one of the highest profile and John Moubray possibly the highest profile of all the methodologies proponents.

ISC is the company that originally developed the RCM toolkit used by RCM2 practitioners throughout the world. It was staffed by several RCM2 practitioners whose members had played an active role in some of the developments behind the methodology.


Aladon, the company he formed, has since passsed to Ivara and is now being tightly integrated into their suite of products and services, and IFS Defence now has one of the worlds leading RCM software programs. Which, despite its very simple architecture and structure, remains one of the easier to use and practical systems in todays marketplace.

The questions are many; will the Ivara RCM2 practitioners still have access to the RCM Toolkit - or do they even want to have access to it? Will the RCM Toolkit and the other RCM tools, RCS etcetera, find their way into the IFS suite of systems? And what will be the future of the Aladon network, a collection of franchise consultancies encompassing some of the worlds leading companies in the field of asset reliability services?

Without the ubiquitous John Moubray at the helm both of these brands have lost a great and very visible advocate. Not known for his user-friendly nature, John managed to dominate the discussion on RCM until his passing.

It is a timely reminder to those out there building asset reliability consultancies about brand management. Moubray was the brand, not RCM2, not Aladon and not the RCM Toolkit. His shadow has continued the work stream to a number of his franchisees but with the lack of an authoritive voice, which John filled rightly or wrongly, the industry is about to become even more competitive than it presently is.

Equipment, Maintenance and Technology is part of the Lassiter Group. (C) Lassiter 2007.