How to Care for our Physical Assets

(Video Transcript)

Hi everyone. I’m in Lambertville, New Jersey and I just ate at a restaurant where they grow their own herbs, and it reminds me about Reliability Centered Maintenance.

If you make the most delicious meal but you put the wrong herb on it, it could ruin the entire dish. For example, if you make chicken parmesan but you put Thai basil on it, that could ruin the whole thing. You would definitely want to put Italian basil on your chicken parmesan.

Well, the same thing goes for our physical assets. Our physical assets are managed at the Failure Mode level. So, it’s up to us to identify what those Failure Modes are and to manage them appropriately.

For example, I would never replace the alternator in my car every year. But I do replace my engine oil every 7,500 miles. That’s because I know that after 7,500 miles, the oil in my car is going to start to break down and won’t be able to lubricate the engine components properly. So, I change it on a scheduled basis.

But my alternator fails randomly. So, I definitely don’t want to be changing it every year. I would be wasting my time. And, I could be introducing infant mortality.

So, there you have it. What Reliability Centered Maintenance helps us to do is to identify what Failure Modes are associated with our equipment and it helps us to figure out the appropriate way to manage them. That could be Condition Based Maintenance (CBM). It could be Preventive Maintenance. And, it could be Default Strategies, like changes to a training program or maybe there needs to be some sort of an equipment redesign.

Reliability Centered Maintenance can help us figure out exactly how we need to appropriately take care of our equipment so, in turn, our equipment gives us exactly what we need.

I’m Nancy Regan. Thank you for watching.