Reliability centered maintenance principles can also be used to extend equipment life by basing replacement decisions on equipment condition rather than predetermined lifecycles. With a high-level organizational perspective, often wasteful “cookie-cutter” type maintenance practices can be avoided. By implementing a consistent, structured method to decide whether predictive, preventive, or run-to-failure strategies should be used, reliability centered maintenance can take the guesswork and debate out of these important decisions.

Successful implementation of RCM can lead to improved overall cost performance, reduced downtime, and greater insight into the overall risk profile of the organization. Reliability Centered Maintenance Advantages Using logic trees to screen maintenance tasks consistently for all types of equipment, RCM requires a consistent focus on the applicability of maintenance tasks to failure modes, and the effectiveness of these tasks in cost effectively reducing failure probability. Reliability centered maintenance principles also acknowledge design limitations by recognizing feedback provided through maintenance history and using it to improve the design and predict asset lifecycles. Once these two essential requirements are met, cost-benefit strategies can then be used to reduce discretionary maintenance expenses. Reliability centered maintenance principles dictate safety and security must be ensured above all else. Actuary principles to balance risk factors such as age and usage against maintenance costs are also employed to avoid assigning costly protocols to low value assets. RCM takes a holistic approach with equipment and system operation taking precedence over individual component functions. RCM defines failure as any unsatisfactory condition from a slight degradation in performance to total loss of function. This makes it easier to prioritize and categorize failures and assign maintenance tasks to address them appropriately. The core premise is to preserve system functionality by determining what the potential failure modes are then exploring and weighting the causes and consequences of each one. While root cause analysis uses cause and effect relationships to examine why a given failure occurred, RCM maintenance principles are based on understanding what is likely to happen if the cause of failure is present. Reliability Centered Maintenance Principles By studying cause and effect relationships along with the probability and outcome of each failure, maintenance tasks can be cost-effectively prioritized based on safety, security and the importance of each asset to the overall operation. Pioneered by the airline industry, reliability centered maintenance encompasses reactive, preventive, and predictive (condition-based) maintenance as well as failure-finding processes to detect hidden or latent failure modes. Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) is a customized maintenance process determined through the analysis of potential failure modes and their impact on system performance. What is Reliability Centered Maintenance?

Reliability principal definition