Decoding Reliability-Centered Maintenance Process for Manufacturing Industries: 10th Discipline of World Class Maintenance Management – The 12 Disciplines

In this book, I wrote two defenitions of RCM both from the equipment and human side. From an equipment point of view, RCM is a process use to determine the correct maintenance tasks and requirements of an existing asset, equipment, machine or system in its current operating context. From the human point of view, RCM is a way or process of capturing and extracting the knowledge, understanding, and wisdom of the most experienced people in the plant and transforming it into a living document and their legacy.

Although there are many industries that implement RCM such as Oil and Gas, Power Plants and similar industries. What I find it interesting and also one of the reasons I wrote this book is that majority of manufacturing plants find it difficult to implement this methodology. This book will explain why and what can be done about it.

Although there are many variations on how to perform RCM based on different books and consultants, its original methodology can be traced back to Stanley Nolan, Howard Heap, Thomas Matteson, and Bill Mentzer of United Airlines. The original classical RCM approach will contain seven questions to conform with SAE JA1011. I have added one more question to the classical version, asking if your industry is ready for the RCM change.

The RCM process is done by first writing the operating context or how the equipment is currently operated in the plant. RCM will be begin wth a simple FMEA that will answer the first 4 question on what are the functions, functional failure, failure modes and the effects of each failure mode. These failure modes will undergo an algorithm or decision diagram to finally come up with the correct maintenance tasks to address the failure modes.

This book provides a detailed step by step guidelines on how to implement RCM successfully. An actual case study on an Air Handling Unit (AHU) is also provided to the reader. The output of the RCM analysis is based on how the equipment or asset is currently operating in the plant which makes it different from OEM derived tasks usually provided in the OEM manual.

What RCM believes is that not all failures are created equal. Each failure have their own degree of consequences and that the degree of maintenance requirements needed vary depending on the consequences of each failure mode. An algorithm or RCM Decision Diagram is provided so that the team undergoing the analysis can be guided on what maintenance tasks should be done to address each of the failure modes.

This book also contains 27 Frequently Asked Questions on RCM, may of which was raised by people in my class who attended this course on RCM. Besides these Frequently Asked Questions, the author of this book have also written 22 Tips on implementing RCM and 15 common reasons on why most RCM Efforts fail. This will provide industry an added edge on what to do and what not to do.

Finally, the conclusion of this book discloses and justifies that manufacturing industries should start doing RCM analysis in their equipment and assets to minimize their losses and reduce their maintenance costs. What is important is for these industries to believe in the process so they can transition from being reactive to proactive in their maintenance tasks, as this is what every industry would want. Finally, the question is, would it be possible on integrating RCM into the TPM process? This book will answer that question and how it can be done.