quote:

"Maintenance" is a term generally used to define the routine activities to sustain standards of performance throughout the in-service, or operational, part of the asset life cycle. In doing this, the maintenance policy designer needs to take account of a range of factors. These include the complexities of operating environment, the available resources for performing maintenance, and the ability of the asset to meet its current performance standards.
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In the original report and appendices that produced Reliability-centered Maintenance
(RCM) the authors defined critical failures, initially, as those failures with an impact on safety. Today the term "critical failure" is often used to group failures that will cause what companies consider to be high-impact consequences, a definition that is too variable for a general discussion. For the sake of simplicity, "critical failure" in this paper refers to all failures that will cause the asset to perform to a standard less than what is required of it.

If an asset management program is aimed at maximum cost-effectiveness over an assets life, then it must look at the management of critical failures. By definition, this approach is centered on the reliability of the asset. (Or reliability-centered) So, in essence, the role of the policy designer can be defined as the formulating costeffective asset management programs, routine activities and one-of procedural and design changes, to maintain standards of performance through reducing the likelihood of critical failures to an acceptable level, or eliminating them. This is also the essence of modern RCM.

Letter-Captured_by_Data.pdf