Run To Failure Maintenance Strategy – RTF

The "Run To Failure" (RTF) maintenance strategy, while difficult to translate literally into Turkish, can be considered a type of incidental maintenance. I will try to explain the difference between incidental maintenance and "Run To Failure" maintenance strategies in later articles, but now let's examine what this "Run To Failure" type of maintenance is.

As I tried to explain in our previous article, whether you are implementing a preventive maintenance or a reliability-centered maintenance strategy for your business, the first thing you should do is conduct an equipment risk analysis.

In this study, you can include equipment with low scores in terms of safety, environment, and quality, as well as low mean time to failure (MTTR) and mean failure frequency (MTBB) scores based on predictions from your past data, in the RTF list.

However, one point to consider here is operational risk. The question of how much an unplanned downtime in equipment affects operations must be clearly answered.

I will try to explain this with examples later in the article; now let's detail RTF.

What is the RTF Maintenance Strategy?

RTF (Random Access Testing) is a suitable strategy for inexpensive, low-risk, or disposable equipment. Equipment that is easily disassembled and maintainable by technicians of all levels is a suitable candidate for RTF.

However, there are points to consider when applying the RTF maintenance strategy to equipment. The maintenance activity should be defined within an instruction framework that is accessible and understandable to everyone. It should be supported by training if necessary. For equipment where this strategy is applied, spare parts stocks for maintenance or replacement must be available.

What are the Advantages of the Run-to-Failure Maintenance Strategy?

Lower Maintenance Costs: An equipment failure impacting production can be an expensive solution. However, waiting for equipment failure before performing maintenance reduces downtime caused by planned maintenance. At the same time, because the maintenance activity time is extended, spare parts costs and maintenance labor costs are also reduced.

Time Savings: In this strategy, the maintenance team will perform maintenance on the equipment only when necessary, thus saving team members time to maintain riskier equipment.

Ease of Implementation: Since this strategy is determined by selecting equipment that is easy to maintain and organizing maintenance instructions, maintenance implementation becomes easier.

When is the Run-to-Failure Strategy Reasonable?

The RTF approach is preferable if unavoidable failure will not minimize overall performance and productivity. Simply put, it is best used when maintenance managers clearly understand all the risks associated with failure and trust their teams' ability to quickly resolve problems.

The following situations can be given as examples:

In a cooling water circulation system with three circulation pumps, one of which is kept in reserve, pump maintenance should be delayed until one pump fails, rather than performing preventive maintenance.

In a water treatment system with two tandem filters, filter media should always be kept in reserve, and filter changes should be performed while monitoring the differential pressure gauge.