An Effective Reliability Program Starts with Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM)

(Video Transcript)

Hi Everyone.  I’m at the Nashville airport.  And you can see behind me and probably also hear that there’s a lot of construction going on.  And when I look at that, I’m reminded about Reliability Centered Maintenance.

Because when an organization builds something new, whether it’s a parking garage or a building or whatever structure, they always start with the foundation.  And that’s what Reliability Centered Maintenance is like.

The first step in Reliability Centered Maintenance is writing Functions.  And when we write our Functions properly, what we’re doing is we’re identifying exactly what we need from our equipment.  So in essence, we are identifying the kind of Reliability we want and expect from it.

From there, we go on and we identify what could cause failure.  In other words, what could cause us not to achieve the Reliability that we already defined.

Then we write Failure Effects and assess Consequences.

And then, we are in a position of strength to figure out what we should do to manage each Failure Mode.  And that could be Proactive Maintenance, or it could be some sort of a Default Strategy like changing a training program.  And, for some Failure Modes, we may even identify that no scheduled maintenance is a viable way to manage that Failure Mode.

But the first place to begin is with the Foundation.  And that’s with writing Functions.  So, there you have it.  If you’re interested in achieving the kind of Reliability you know you need from your equipment, Reliability Centered Maintenance is an excellent place to start.  I’m Nancy Regan.  Thank you for watching.