RELIABILITY CENTERED MAINTENANCE IMPLEMENTATION
Focus on Management, Efficiency and Equipment Reliability
RELIABILITY CENTERED MAINTENANCE
Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) is the process to determine a more effective maintenance approach. The RCM philosophy employs preventive maintenance (PM), predictive maintenance (PdM), real-time monitoring, failure execution (RTF, also called reactive maintenance), and proactive maintenance techniques in a manner integrated to increase the likelihood that a machine or component will function as required during its design life cycle with a minimum of maintenance. The philosophy aims to provide the installation’s indicated function with the required reliability and availability at the lowest cost; RCM requires maintenance decisions based on maintenance requirements supported by a technical and economic justification.
These are some of the benefits you will get with the implementation of the RCM.
The RCM analysis carefully considers the following questions:
1. What does the system or equipment do? What is its function?
2. What functional failures can occur?
3. What are the possible consequences of these functional failures?
4. What can be done to reduce the probability of the failure, identify the onset of the failure or reduce the consequences of the failure?
“RCM should produce the perfect maintenance program – the least possible plant equipment maintenance cost for ensuring low operational risk and high equipment reliability, all of it resulting in optimizing Plant Operation and Maintenance/Key Performance Indicators.”
RCM FAILURE MANAGEMENT PROCESS
Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) is a corporate-level maintenance strategy implemented to optimize the maintenance program of a company or facility. The result of an RCM program is the maintenance strategies that should be implemented on each of the facility's assets. The maintenance strategies are optimized so that the functionality of the plant is maintained using cost-effective maintenance techniques.
Assessment of plant situation with focus on equipment availability, maintenance cost and replacement investments.
Adequate maintenance of new or existing plant equipment is of utmost importance for optimal plant performance and operation. Without proper maintenance procedures, a good preventive maintenance program in combination with inadequate maintenance structure continuously results in lower capacity, more frequent downtimes, and higher maintenance costs. The Cement Institute will evaluate each of the plant assets to determine the specific requirements posed by existing maintenance systems and recommend the necessary modification based on the RCM failure management process.
Equipment Reliability
The Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) supports the activities of maintenance personnel in the organization and elaborates an effective plant maintenance program. Cost minimization in plant availability and reliability, economical plant maintenance, and increase in the equipment's service life are only a few advantages brought by the implementation of the RCM.
Efficiency of Maintenance Management
The RCM is an analytical process used to determine the most value-added maintenance requirements needed to keep the equipment functioning properly. Support major shutdown planning and execution, Quality control of Equipment History, Cost Control, Organization improvement, projects. Assessment of plant situation with a focus on equipment availability, maintenance cost, and replacement investments.
The RCM Primary Principles are
01.
RCM is function-oriented
It seeks to preserve the function of the system or equipment, not just operability for the operation's sake. The redundancy of functions across multiple devices improves functional reliability but increases the life cycle cost in terms of acquisition and operating costs.
02.
RCM is focused on the system
It is more concerned with maintaining the system function than the individual component function.
03.
RCM focuses on reliability
It treats failure statistics in an actuarial manner. The relationship between the operating age and the failures experienced is essential. RCM does not care too much about the simple failure rate; it seeks to know the conditional probability of failure at specific ages (the likelihood of a failure occurring in each given operating age range).
04.
RCM recognizes design limitations
Its objective is to maintain the inherent reliability of equipment design, recognizing that inherent reliability changes are a matter of design rather than maintenance. In the best case, maintenance can only reach and maintain the level of reliability of the equipment, which is provided by design. However, RCM recognizes that maintenance comments can improve the original design. Also, RCM acknowledges that there is often a difference between perceived design life and intrinsic or real design life and addresses this through the Age Exploration (EE) process.
05.
RCM is driven by safety and economy
Safety must be guaranteed at any cost; thereafter, profitability becomes the criterion.
06.
RCM defines the failure as any unsatisfactory condition
Therefore, the failure may be a loss of function (the operation ceases) or an acceptable loss of quality (the operation continues).
07.
RCM uses a logical tree to monitor maintenance tasks
It provides a consistent approach to the maintenance of all types of equipment.
08.
RCM tasks must be applicable
The tasks must address the failure mode and consider the characteristics of the failure mode.
09.
RCM tasks must be effective
Tasks must reduce the probability of failure and be profitable
10.
RCM recognizes three types of maintenance tasks
Timed (PM): programmed when appropriate. Directed condition (PdM and real-time monitoring): this is done when conditions indicate that they are necessary. Search for failures (one of several aspects of proactive maintenance): the equipment runs in case of failure. This is acceptable for some situations and some types of equipment.
11.
RCM is a living system
It collects data on the results obtained and returns them to improve the design and future maintenance. This information is an essential part of the proactive maintenance element of the RCM program.
The Cement Institute will provide expertise in the implementation of the Reliability Centered Maintenance implementation by:
- Assisting in the preparation of the asset identification
- Assisting in the preparation of the critical asset analysis
- Definition of the strategies
- Maintenance execution strategy
- Materials
- Assets
- Maintenance plan
- Defining the functions required by the individual plant and adapting the system functions to meet their specific needs
- RCM training
RCM is needed if:
- The plant experiences unacceptable safety or environmental performance.
- Maintenance costs are higher than expected.
- Plant performance is lower relative compared to comparable business units.
To know more about RCM implementation: