Myths of RCM: Myth 5 RCM requires large amounts of data before it can commence

This is a paradigm that is slowly starting to fade away. However, I still regularly come across maintenance managers and directors who make statements such as “We are not ready for RCM yet because we do not have the data to support it…”, or “we are not in a position to get the benefits from RCM because our data is not up to scratch…” The underlying belief is that RCM is not possible without a good base of data to build from.

Like many other myths, this one is not only false and misleading, but also dangerous.

If RCM needs data, then we cannot start until that data is available. The problem here is that before we can have failure data with which to take decisions we need failures!

Obviously it is an unethical practice to “crash a few more” assets just so we can work out how to manage them; particularly when the consequences of failure could be significant financial costs, environmental damages or even risks to life and safety.

In fact, Resnikov, the mathematician who wrote “Mathematical Aspects of Reliability-centered Maintenance” stated that:

“The Reliability-centered maintenance program elevates extends these philosophical views to engineering by elevating the unobtainability of information to a positive principle”

Meaning that through the rigorous nature of RCM, the rules contained within the decision diagrams and the underlying concepts that have come about in SAE JA1011, we are able to take decisions regarding asset management with an absence of data.

The figure above shows my experiences in starting asset reliability programs of all different throughout the world. In general, we can expect to be taking decisions based on only 30% data as a maximum.

For those of you familiar with trying to perform reliability analysis or predict component failure, you will recognize that this is actually a generous figure! I have started many analysis, RCM and otherwise, with close to zero data available for analysis!

Therefore, Reliability Centered Maintenance can commence with an absence of data and it is actually our duty ethically to try to deal with equipment failure proactively rather than waiting for undesirable events to occur.

In fact, one of the side effects of a properly targeted and implanted RCM program will be a reduction of failure data to analyze because we are reducing the number of unplanned failures. However, as we will review in Myth 6, an RCM program will help to get better data through failure management strategies.