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Generally used on newer machines or plants because of the time investment required, RCM is particularly useful for asset-intensive organisations. An upcoming IMechE training course, Reliability Centred and Risk Based Maintenance, will concentrate on the development and application of maintenance plans, helping attendees improve reliability and reduce costs for their employers.
Here are four useful tips from course trainer Matthew Laskaj, to help you get started with RCM.
Check the system is functioning
The purpose of maintenance is to keep the equipment doing the thing that the user wants it to do – that might be uptime, reducing breakdowns or some other objective. To do that, we have to make sure that the asset does the function that we want it to do. When we carry out maintenance, we will be making sure the product or process continues to run in the correct way.
Identify failure modes
We first need to understand how the system can fail before we can understand the consequences. Once we understand what the purpose or function of the equipment is, determining the ways it can fail can help us to better identify the possible consequences. With the help of the technicians, operators, manufacturers or engineers, a list of failure modes is created, along with the effects. For example, something could corrode, which could lead to the eventual collapse of a structure. From this, we can start to think about the consequence.
Set your priorities
In general terms, we can either do no work and fix something when it fails, we can do overhauls and replacements based on a schedule, or we can do condition checks, visual checks or other checks like vibration analysis. An example could be replacing the brake pads on your bike, which you might just choose to do every three years – or you might choose to measure the thickness every six months and replace them when they are too thin.
If we understand the way in which something can fail, we can then say ‘Is that really really bad, or not that bad?’ If it's really bad, we can prioritise those ones, and we can manage those consequences first.
What we're effectively doing is saying ‘What should it do? If it doesn't do that, how bad is it?’ And if it's really bad, we need to put something in place to make it less bad, have less consequence.
Manage the consequences
If something is at risk of failing, what is the best task to manage that failure? RCM manages consequences – that’s the key thing. We're using RCM to manage and reduce risk, which is made up of consequence and probability. What's the likelihood of something happening, and what's the consequence if it does happen? By managing consequences, we're reducing or managing risk.
IMechE’s Reliability Centred and Risk Based Maintenance course takes place online from 13-20 October. Learn more and book now.
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Content published by Professional Engineering does not necessarily represent the views of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.