reliability centered design

It’s been nearly 20 years since I first learned about reliability centered maintenance (RCM). As part of the Kodak Park Maintenance and Reliability Team, I was one of a few people who volunteered to take a few courses in RCM and report back to the team on the viability of the tool. I had no idea at the time that two decades later, I would be facilitating and instructing RCM at companies in nearly every country around the world. It’s strange sometimes how quickly things change; one minute you’re a maintenance team leader and the next you’re facilitating reliability centered maintenance for a living.

The Application of Strategic Reliability Principles

by Jay Shellogg

This article is a follow-up to one the author wrote for the December/January 2014 issue of Uptime magazine that explained some of the fundamental reasons North American manufacturing has not been able to sustain reliable asset performance. The author stated, "Since the discovery of modern asset reliability principles (first detailed by Nowlan and Heap in the mid-1960s) and up until the latest evolution in the 1990s by John Moubray, some 30 odd years have passed, but with little rigorous adoption of these principles into the asset management strategies of North American industry." In that article, the author explained why the adoption of these reliability principles has been so difficult and what he thinks is required for the adoption of these reliability principles. In this article, the author will expound on those ideas, but warns that sacred cows are going to be slaughtered and it will be messy.