I've just been reading an article in Reliability Magazine Volume 10 issue 2. The title of the article is "Maintenance Improvement at KoSa, A case study." A statement in this article brought to light a good question. The statement says: "The foundation elements of a good work order system, planning and scheduling, and basic PM - cleaning, lubrication, and inspection - must be in place before advanced initiatives such as RCM and autonomous maintenance can be successfully implemented."

One of the main purposes for RCM is to properly evaluate your operation, so that you can implement the foundation elements. If you don't have reliability, how can you properly set up a PM or work order system? So, I pose the question: What comes first?

RCM must be feed with data that is coming from.. the workorders, you must have system in place before can do root cause analysis and other "fancy" stuff.

The first rule in maintenance is in my opinion cleanliness
If the equipment/environment is dirty you wont detect oil leaks, and other anomalities. Operators and mechanics will not even come close to the equipment, imagine make a walk-around inspection. The mechanics will execute lousy jobs and you will have DIN-squads (Do It Now) running arround from the one breakdown to the other, lots of overtime, rework. No time to plan for even a lubricant change.

I see RCM as a maintenance management philosophy. Because developing a philosophy involving everybody is a long term process, it can appear as the achievement of the process taking you from reactive to proactive maintenance in wich process you will have to develop the work order, planification and PM system. It can also be there at the beginning and be what will lead you through this process because the willingness is already there.
J-Marc

Dear Don,

I would have to disagree strongly with the quote that you posted:

quote:

"The foundation elements of a good work order system, planning and scheduling, and basic PM - cleaning, lubrication, and inspection - must be in place before advanced initiatives such as RCM and autonomous maintenance can be successfully implemented."

RCM is not so much an advanced initiative as it is a FUNDAMENTAL initiative. RCM delivers the safe minimum levels of maitnenance that an asset requires to ensure it will do what the users want in its current operating context. (That is somewhat changed, but in essence it is a quote from RCM2 - Moubray)

It is my belief that without implementing RCM you are wasting time and resources, and potentially increasing the levels of risk to the operations through over maintenance and failure mismanagement. In fact many of the basic initiatives stated within that quote will result from an RCM analysis.

I would also take issue with the remark regarding needing information / data to do RCM. This is one of the greatest misconceptions regarding RCM int he world today. (Almost as bad as the "bad actors myth") It is rarely the case that there is the information available to do a full reliability analysis on any plant. Data integrity is improving as technology advances, however at present it is still not good enough to capture all the information required.

Where there is information it is often not ofc the level that is required.

Where there are safety or severe operational consequences then they usually only occur once, leaving very little for rigorous analysis. In fact many of the failure modes that you may find may nev er have occurred!

And the fundamental error with historical analysis..... before you can have failure data you need..... FAILURES! Failures that can have economic, safety, environmental or operational consequences. Allowing these to just happen is not ethical, nor is it recommendable under any circumstances.

So I would suggest, and I regularly recommend this to clients, that RCM is a frundamental part of the maintenance development of any organization that is seeking to proactively manage its asset base. It is the first steps into what is becoming an increasingly complex array of options for managing maintenance effectively.

Once the baseline maintenance strategies have been developed then the truly complex and advanced work can begin.

My 2c worth,

Daryl Mather
www.strategic-advantages.com

Thank you all for your response to my question. I think we all agree that we disagree with the quote I included in my first message.
RCM is not some small part of a larger program that can be implemented at different stages. It is the larger program. It's all about achieving optimal operation of our facilities. There are a number of ways to do that. If I had to break it down to the very foundation of what RCM is to me, I would have to ask "Where are we, and where do we want to go?" I live in Texas, and I want to go to New York. There are a whole lot of ways for me to get there. RCM is the process that I use to get from Point A to point B. The problem with the quote "The foundation elements of a good work order system, planning and scheduling, and basic PM - cleaning, lubrication, and inspection - must be in place before advanced initiatives such as RCM and autonomous maintenance can be successfully implemented." is that you don't know where point A is.

Don,

For any Company that thinks (or knows) its current performance is poor, e.g., that its reliability is low, downtime is high, costs are high, it is at Point A.

World beaters are at Point B.

The trouble is that many Companies who are at Point A fool themselves into believing they are at Point B, or least part way there.

Now to the next issue. To get from Point A to Point B, you can walk or run. If the Company is the equivalent of a toddler, with few strengths,it should learn to walk before starting to run. It needs a level of maturity, get its house in order before reaching out.

I think your quote applies well to such Plants, and I think there are many more of these than mature ones. The world has moved but they are still there, 50 years behind. If such a Compsny gets the basics right, viz., cleanliness, a good lub program and keeps things aligned, balanced and bolts tight, they can get rid of 50-60% of their reliability problems. You dont need RCM, TPM, Six Sigma to do this. When they have 'learned to walk', they are ready to 'run' with RCM or other tools.

Let us not kid ourselves; RCM is only the front end, all it produces is a plan. You still have to execute the work according to this plan and to the right quality standards before it shows on the bottom line. Companies that have not learned to walk will falter and fall if they are just given a high quality RCM based plan.

In my view, RCM is a means to an end, it is not the end. It is a great process, in the right hands. In my view, you have to earn your spurs to be allowed into the RCM world.

V.Narayan.

Vee, Good Point!
I agree that some companies need to start out slow, and progress into more advanced programs. If a company is purely reactive and has no formal program in place for lube, inspection, work orders, etc., I would not recommend a full blown CMMS and predictive maintenance program to them. However, shouldn't some sort of program be in place to help guide these infant companies through their baby steps? One of the first things you do in TPM is set up a clean and inspect program which gets the operators involved with taking ownership in their machines. In setting up a good lube program, they need guidance. What needs lubed, how much, how often? Alignment and balancing: what's good and what's bad? How do they measure that? Isn't all of this part of RCM? Or, is RCM an advanced process that needs to be implemented at some magical moment? If so, when?

Hullo Don,

You are quite right, TPM would lead them through all the initial steps. So will RCM, but introducing either of these is no small job. Both require quite some resources and effort and have a longish gestation period.

To a Company that is struggling with ca. 50% breakdown work, has its Priority System lopsided, such that they have 80% High Priority W.Os and 5% Low Priority jobs, Plans only 30% of its W.Os, what do you say? Is this situation the exception? I think a poll with our readers will show that many of them are struggling with similar fire-fighting scenarios.

Can we say to them, let us use the TPM or RCM silver bullet and all your problems will vanish? How long would that take? Do you think we can put up a cconvincing case for change with the same management that allowed this situation to happen in the first place?

These Companies need some early successes. Without TPM, they can still get a program in place that will attend to cleanliness, proper lubrication, alignment and keeping bolts tight. They can do this in days, without having to convince management. The results can be dramatic, and breakdowns will decrease rapidly, so some resources will be freed up. Their credibility will also go up significantly. In 3-6 months they can get their Priority Setting rules sorted out and get some order in Planning & Scheduling. This will make another step change in performance.

They should then embark on failure analysis, using bad-actors, yes bad-actors. Some of my respected colleagues disagree on this point, but I am convinced it is a necessary step. Simple failure analysis at the physical level will do, to start with, but they should be done by the technicians and operators with some help fron experts. Lets not worry about 'proper RCAs' yet, that can come later.

After 12-18 months of all this, the stage is set for doing some 'proper' reliability improvement work, with RCM, RCA, RBI, IPF etc. By then the Maintenance Department will have good credibility, Ops/Maint teams would have been established and the tender shoots of a reliability culture may be visible.

Ram-rodding RCM, TPM etc through every Company, whatever its state, is in my view, counter-productive. It can make Consultants richer and the Companies cynical. But it won't improve performance.

Regards.

V.Narayan.