Fundamentals of Reliability-Centered Maintenance Strategy

Regardless of the sector, as maintenance professionals, we often spend our time "putting out the fire" to solve immediate problems. We receive praise for recurring failures in critical equipment that keep businesses running, failures that require quick solutions.

But what if we could break free from this cycle and deal with failures in a more controlled, planned, and safe way?

I believe it's widely known that our primary role as experts or managers is to enable technicians to identify failures before they occur, plan preventative maintenance activities to limit downtime, prevent unnecessary costs from emergencies, and increase technician productivity while doing all this.

Maintenance alone doesn't increase the reliability of a system or equipment. If we want to increase reliability in the long term and make it sustainable, we need to design.

Designing an equipment/asset to be easily operated and maintained with minimum operating and maintenance needs throughout its lifecycle is one of the most effective ways to increase reliability.

What are the fundamentals of Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM)?

1. Identifying the steps towards a successful implementation

This step involves a general framework and requires a certain level of experience, dedication, and continuity to be implemented. Perhaps most importantly, it necessitates the commitment of Senior Management. In this sense, this part is the most difficult stage to implement.

2. Identifying Challenges/Problems

You must identify the points that are hindering your progress and organization-wide engagement, or that are not working for you.

3. Conduct a root cause analysis for each problem

Using problem-solving techniques such as fishbone diagrams and 5Why analysis, you should develop scenarios regarding why the program is not progressing and what needs to be done to improve it.

4. Align the root causes with the headings

You should align the outputs obtained from the main headings above with the fundamental issues hindering the implementation of the reliability and asset management program.

5. Develop solutions to overcome the challenges you encounter

At this point, your team's experience and expertise will help you learn from past mistakes in the future.

Why Are We Failing?

Lack of Training - Lack of Skills; people may be untrained or lack basic knowledge of reliability and asset management.

Lack of Awareness (Trust) - Lack of budget; Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and quality data are absent in decision-making processes. This leads to a lack of awareness in individuals or the organization.

Lack of Empowerment - Personnel do not understand the situation. Personnel lack the skills or expertise to translate reliability and asset management goals into action.

Lack of Leadership - Leadership means failing to accomplish a task. This can be defined as a lack of culture and is often followed by a lack of direction (strategy) or a lack of accountability (working according to the plan).

If the deficiencies mentioned above can be addressed as early as possible, a much faster and more enjoyable period awaits you.

However, solutions to such problems await you at every stage of the structure's setup and implementation.