reliability centered design

by Carlos Mario Perez Jaramillo

Reliability centered maintenance (RCM) focuses on identifying what should be done to assure the functions of a system or asset in a safe, cost-effective and reliable way. RCM analysis is carried out by a group of experts, called the analysis team, for the equipment, asset, or object of the study. It is their responsibility to answer seven questions about the asset being analyzed. In Part 1 of this series, myths 1-10 were discussed. Now we will examine the remaining 12 myths.

 by Carlos Mario Perez Jaramillo

Reliability centered maintenance (RCM) focuses on identifying what should be done to assure the functions of a system or asset in a safe, cost-effective and reliable way. RCM analysis is carried out by a group of experts, called the analysis team, for the equipment, asset, or object of the study. It is their responsibility to answer seven questions (above) about the asset being analyzed.

7 questions to ask when analyzing your assets:

1. What are the functions and performance associated with the asset’s standards in its current operating context?
2. In what ways does it not perform its functions?
3. What is the cause stopping it from performing its function?
4. What happens when each failure occurs?
5. What is the impact of each failure?
6. What can be done to predict or prevent every failure?
7. What should be done if adequate work could not be performed before the failure?

By Jay Shellogg

Since the discovery of modern asset reliability principles, first detailed by F. Stanley Nowlan and Howard F. Heap in the mid-1960s, 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. This article is intended to help explain why the adoption of these truths has been so hard to come by over these past 30 years and what it will take for the adoption of these reliability principles to occur.