What Is Reliability Strategy Development?

Introduction

Reliability strategy development (RSD) is based on three main techniques:

• Reliability-centered maintenance (RCM);

• PM Optimization (PMO);

• Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA).

These three techniques serve as the proven foundations of any successful reliability strategy. They all focus on creating time directed (TD), condition directed (CD) or failure finding (FF) tasks and Run to Failure (RTF) decisions that make up a preventive maintenance program. These tasks seek to minimize system and component degradation, thus ensuring the assets continue to do what their users require in their present operating context. Each technique is a differently structured process to develop efficient and effective maintenance plans for an asset to minimize its probability of failure.

Successful reliability strategies rely on the correct combination and application of these techniques to deliver value to organizations in a safe, cost-effective way.

Regardless of which technique is applied, successful outcomes will be increasingly likely if the four phases of strategic change are understood and applied.

Reliability strategy development relies on two areas of competence:
1. Understanding the differences between RCM, PMOand FMEA.
2. Identifying when and where each technique should be applied.

RCM Reliability-centered Maintenance

RCM is generally used to achieve improvements in all aspects of asset management, such as the establishment of a safe, minimum, or optimized level of maintenance, changes in operating procedures and establishment of an effective maintenance plan for the most critical systems.

Successful implementation of RCM promotes cost effectiveness, asset uptime and a better understanding of the level of risk the organization is currently managing. It has been demonstrated that the best benefit for applying RCM is realized during the design and development phases of the asset lifecycle by eliminating or mitigating effects of its failure modes. However, RCM can be successfully applied at any time during an asset’s lifecycle.RCM development has been an evolutionary process.More than 40 years have passed since its inception in the 1970s, during which RCM has become a mature process. However, industry has yet to fully embrace theRCM methodology in spite of its proven track record.

PMO PM Optimization

A preventive/planned maintenance optimization process focuses on evaluating each PM task and eliminating unnecessary tasks or wasteful activities, thus improving the plant’s overall performance. This allows refocusing the resource’s constrained maintenance toward effective failure prevention maintenance activities.

FMEA Failure mode and effects analysis

(FMEA), also sometimes called failure mode, effects and criticality analysis(FMECA), is a step-by-step approach for identifying all possible failures in design and operations (e.g., the manufacturing process of a product or service). Developed in the 1940s by the U.S. military, theFMEA process was further developed and enhanced by the aerospace and automotive industries. Now, it’s being applied to eliminate or minimize all operational failures (i.e., defects) in industrial and non-industrial applications.

This article is based on the RSD or Reliability Strategy DevelopmentPassport, in the Certified Reliability Leader Body of Knowledge based on Uptime Elements Reliability Framework and Asset Management System.

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