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Living RCM Pilot

Introduction

Three principal initiatives have dominated the maintenance management landscape from the 1970’s to the present day. They are:

1. Reliability-centered maintenance (RCM),
2. Computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS), and
3. Condition based maintenance (CBM).

Programs, such as TPM, HAZOPS, RCFA, RBI, ISO 14224, and many others contribute notably to the continuous, measurable, bottom-line improvement ideal sought by all maintenance departments. As an antidote to the disorientation brought on by overwhelming change, RCM, and particularly “living RCM” encourage alignment and synergy among a seemingly endless variety of maintenance initiatives. RCM grew out of a serious need in the 1960s by the commercial aviation industry. The RCM project culminated in mandated processes that address failure and its consequences. In RCM, the operating context of each asset item dictates the precise methods for the mitigation of the consequences of failure.

The second major initiative, the CMMS, when first introduced to maintenance departments, was hailed as a tool for improving asset reliability. Such lofty aspirations and claims have largely moved aside in favor of the more mundane needs of efficient work management, budgets, materials allocation, and so on.

CBM, the third initiative, currently fuels a good part of today’s maintenance ideas and activities. Advances in real time capture, storage, and signal processing have reduced the per data-unit cost of information while increasing the volume and the quality of acquired data. Reliability analysis software provides life cycle costing, simulation, and Weibull age-reliability estimation methods. Recently, innovative software products have added artificial intelligence to diagnostic capabilities. Thus, an ever-broadening range of new maintenance technologies keeps us all busily learning and implementing new ideas.

The CMMS, RCM, CBM, and other programs often proceed independently from one another within the maintenance organization. Different groups of people, responding to a variety of objectives, manage these separate initiatives. In this article we outline a plan that will connect the diverse maintenance improvement activities and their related technologies. Once bound by common principles of living RCM all programs will align with one another and with the universal goal of reliability, namely, the achievement of high productivity at reduced cost, safely and without exceeding environmental regulatory norms.

The simple principles of living RCM unite the maintenance department in the collaborative process of building a common and valuable intellectual asset. Certainly, information technology in the maintenance domain has always proclaimed this very goal. Despite countless iterations and upgrades over three decades, computerized solutions, on their own, invariably fell short of expectations. Optimism springs eternal, though, and a never ending supply of newer more advanced technologies makes itself available. And we try again.

Moving forward

History need not repeat itself endlessly. A surprisingly simple methodology, will use existing systems

Figure 1 Living RCM process

to their maximum effect. A method, developed by OMDEC, unifies the maintenance processes. It focuses analysis to achieving measurable, continuous reliability improvements. The OMDEC approach recognizes, as its solid point of departure, that structured knowledge when delivered at a strategic moment to those who need it, will attain for the organization, significant, measurable increases in maintenance efficiency, morale, and effectiveness. The steps for moving forward to this end are simple ones. But they must be undertaken, in a pilot project, explicitly and completely.

Step 1 – Management seminar

The success of the living RCM pilot depends mainly on obtaining the manager’s active support throughout the project. The seminar will:

1. Describe the principles and benefits of living RCM
2. Describe the success indicators that the manager must monitor during the course of the pilot.
3. Prescribe the motivational actions that the manager must take during the course of the pilot.

Step 2 – Select the team

Identify individuals within the maintenance and operational group who will participate in a pilot initiative – called living RCM. Select a planner, supervisor, maintainer, engineer and business analyst. These will be technically competent people who are open to new ideas. One of these people will act as the “facilitator”. A OMDEC consultant will mentor the facilitator throughout this living RCM pilot.

Step 3 – Educate the team

The OMDEC consultant will conduct 3 days of training on the subject of “living RCM”. As a

Figure 2 Knowledge flow on work order closure

result of this training each team member will acquire a thorough understanding of the principles and goals. In practical terms they will know:

1. How to select the event type as one of
   1. a potential failure,
   2. a functional failure, or
   3. a suspension
2. How to identify the appropriate RCM reference from the knowledge base
3. How to perform RCM analysis on-the-fly and update the reliability knowledge base
4. How to upgrade the quality of existing historical work order records
5. How to perform basic reliability analysis and to propose improvements to the maintenance plan in the light of a reliability analysis.
6. How to measure success

Step 4 – Conduct the pilot

The team will proceed to include living RCM activities in their daily activities. They will complete work orders and update the knowledge base according to living RCM methods. The facilitator with the assistance of the OMDEC consultant will monitor and guide the team. Daily meetings will assess the quantity and quality of updates to the knowledge base and the work order references to the knowledge base. Selected historical work orders will be updated with the Event type and RCMREF. Reliability analyses will be conducted on these historical records augmented by new well populated work orders arriving as a result of the team’s continuing efforts.

The manager will display his active support by communicating directly with the team participants. Specifically, he will ask these questions of the team:

1. How many new knowledge records have been added?
2. How many corrections to existing knowledge records have been made?
3. How many references to the knowledge base have been made on work orders?
4. How many analyses have been performed?
5. How many recommendations have been made as a result of the analyses?
6. How many recommendations have been implemented?
7. How has performance improved. Specifically, which indicators show the impact of the living RCM program?

Step 5 – Summarize progress and plan a wider application of living RCM

After about six weeks, a presentation by a member of the pilot team will be made to the manager and other interested persons. This presentation will summarize what has been learned in the trial, its tangible benefits to date, and the potential benefits and pitfalls to avoid in rolling the process out to a wider community. A plan will be put forward.