RELIABILITY CENTRED

MAINTENANCE (RCM)
Reliability-centered Maintenance: a process used to
determine what must be done to ensure that any
physical asset continues to do what its users want it
to do in its present operating context.
 Rules to ensure that a lean but effective
maintenance plan results
• The organization should have at least one well trained RCM facilitator. (in the absence
of such a person a trained facilitator can be hired from a R.C.M. consultant).
This person should be a well trained and experienced maintenance
engineer, with a very good knowledge of maintenance theory (with the
accent on failure theory -physical and statistical). He must be able to assess
and analyze failure situations accurately through the collection of
information from operating and maintenance staff, as well as from failure
data.
• The team for the design of a maintenance plan for a specific type of equipment should
typically consist of four persons (apart from the facilitator). There should be a
supervisor and artisan from the maintenance side and a supervisor and
operator from the production side. They should be the most
knowledgeable people on the operation and maintenance of the equipment
that the organisation has. As is the case with any design work, the quality of
the forthcoming maintenance plan is directly proportional to the quality of
the people used in designing the plan.
• The maintenance manager for whom the plan is developed should be actively
involved in the process. This does not mean that he has to sit in on the sessions,
but he must 'run the show’. He will thus be the driving force requesting the
maintenance plan's development. He is also the person bringing the team
together and arranging for the services of a facilitator. But, still more
important, he is also the person who works through the resultant RCM
analysis, approving the maintenance plan and arranging for its (successful)
implementation.
• In RCM as applied in industrial situations, there are no "may be's” -in other words,
you never specify a maintenance task for a failure mode that may exist, but
which has never shown itself to exist.
Step 1: Selecting failure modes as a basis for the
plan

• Prioritisation of plant items

• Items are selected based on their contribution to the profit of an
organization.
• Plant item breakdown
• This is done in order to find the lowest level of Maintenance Significant
Items (those items for which to set a maintenance strategy)
• Prioritisation of Maintenance Significant Items.
• Select the more important Maintenance Significant Items by its % contribution to the
equipment’s downtime.
• Determine the Function(s) of each Maintenance Significant Item in the present
operating context.
• Example: Electronic home alarm system:
• Provide warning of intrusion
• Determine the Functional Failure(s) of each Function
• Does not provide warning at all
• Determine the Failure Mode(s) for each Functional Failure
• Siren failure
• Main board failure
 Step 2 : Determining the Consequence of each
Failure Mode
• Operational Consequences
• Their consequences are primarily of an economical nature. It thus causes production loss, with an accompanying loss in
sales and thus production as well as losses due to the cost of repairing the failure.
• A preventive task must be:
•
• technically feasible in that it must reduce the risk of failure to a low enough level so that the benefits of the preventive
action (less production lost lower breakdown costs) is worth the cost of implementing it.
• it must also be economically feasible. The added cost due to implementation of the task must be lower than the benefit in
terms reduction of lost production and cost of failure.
•
• Else, repair the failure mode only after failure (corrective maintenance) with redesign as an option.
STEP 3: DETERMINE THE MAINTENANCE
STRATEGY OR TASK
 MAINTENANCE
DEFINITION
It is any activity carried out on an asset (machinery)
to:
▪ ensure that the asset continues to perform its
intended functions as expected.
▪ repair the asset or replace components
▪ keeping machinery into acceptable operative standard,
▪ fixing machinery when it fails
▪ trying to predict failures
▪ improving a machines condition
▪ timeous overhauls
▪ doing repairs according to a plan of action
▪ fault finding problematic areas on machinery
 WHY THE NEED FOR MAINTENANCE
As all equipment is prone to breakdown, there must exist
some function to replace or repair such defective unit(s) so
that the production process can be restored.
The reasons are:
▪ Increased sophistication of equipment.
▪ The need for high return of investment.
▪ The high cost of maintenance.
▪ The complexity of maintenance function, (material control,
purchasing, personnel, quality control, scheduling, design
etc.)
 MAINTENANCE CYCLE
What is maintenance cycle?
Maintenance cycle are the processes of maintenance
in the maintenance organisation. It is divided into two
cycles:
▪ Outer cycle
▪ Inner cycle
 OUTER CYCLE (Managerial processes)
Five processes:
▪ Maintenance policy
A document that states what the department should achieve.
It gives the direction and it describes function of the
organisation.
▪ Objectives
They should be based on performance analysis and be
reviewed annually.
▪ Management planning
Plans the functioning (activities or actions) of the
maintenance organisation and budgeting process.
▪ Maintenance audit
hard and soft audit. It compares the state of affairs in the
maintenance organisation to see whether improvement is
necessary or not.
▪ Maintenance performance audit
measure the performance of the maintenance department.
This gives an indication of the success or failures of
maintenance policies that are being pursued.
2. Inner cycle
The inner cycle is concerned with technical and operational
processes.
2.1 Maintenance planning
▪ Maintenance strategy
Decision is to be taken as to which strategy should be used.
▪ Maintenance plan
maintenance plan is drawn up by combining various
component strategies into logical maintenance plan for a
specific equipment type.
▪ Strategy optimisation
strategies can be optimised at regular frequencies.
2.2 Maintenance operation
It consists of three tasks:
▪ Maintenance administration
It involves functions such as maintenance planning, task
scheduling, task planning, procurement, task
documentation and feedback of task data.
▪ Task execution
This is the actual undertaking of the maintenance task.
▪ Task management
This involves the control of maintenance tasks such as quality
control, requisition, prioritisation, backlog management,
safety etc.
 MAINTENANCE FUNCTIONS
The maintenance function consists of a number of
important subsystems, primarily:
Planning
Referring to the inner cycle of the Maintenance Cycle
(figure 3.3), equipment history is utilized to develop
maintenance policies (or strategies) for individual
machines.
These policies are combined into a maintenance plan for each
machine, and the collection of all these machine maintenance
plans can be called The Maintenance Plan for the
organization. It thus contains all previously specified
(preventive) tasks per equipment type, per craft and per
maintenance frequency. This process of developing a
maintenance plan is described in detail in chapters 6 to 9.
Tasks which are typically addressed by the maintenance
planner include determination of inspection frequencies,
overhaul intervals, replacement policies, reliability analysis, to
get the right spare parts, materials, permits, tools,
maintenance crew sizing and skills defined.
Planning defines WHAT and HOW.
SCHEDULING
It is deciding WHEN and by WHOM the job is done.
Scheduling is concerned with the matching of labour, Time
and material resources (spares, spanners, safety protocols
etc.).
Work order priorities. (p.381)
Scheduling types:
▪ Long term scheduling.
▪ Preventive work scheduling.
▪ Shutdown scheduling.
▪ Project workshop scheduling.
▪ Job shop scheduling
▪ Area workshop.
 Project Management tools

Gantt chart is a popular type of bar chart, showing the

interrelationships of how projects, schedules, and other time-
related systems progress over time.
 example
Activity Predecessor Duration (hr) Human
resource
A 2 3
B A 6 1
C A 3 1
D A 2 2
E B 1 1
F C 2 3
G D 2 1
H E 6 2
I B,F 7 1
J G 4 1
K H,I,J 2 2
BAR CHART OR GANNT CHART
 Program Evaluation and Review Technique
(PERT)
Program Evaluation and Review Technique commonly
abbreviated PERT is basically a method for analysing the tasks
involved in completing a given project, especially the time
needed to complete each task, and identifying the minimum
time needed to complete the total project.
EXAMPLE
 CRITICAL PATH METHOD(CPM)
In project management, a critical path is the sequence of
project network terminal elements with the longest overall
duration, determining the shortest time to complete the
project.
The duration of the critical path determines the duration of
the entire project. Any delay of a terminal element on the
critical path directly impacts the planned project completion
date (i.e. there is no slack on the critical path).
The difference between PERT and CPM lies in their way of
representing the logical task order in a network. A scheduling
network is constructed using arrows and nodes (nodes form
the beginning and end of each arrow). CPM uses arrows to
represent tasks (activity on arrow), while PERT uses nodes to
represent tasks (activity on node). In CPM nodes are the joints
between tasks, while in PERT arrows perform this function.
 Inventory planning and purchasing
It is concerned with ensuring those replacement parts and
materials are available when needed. We keep spares to
ensure that there is no delay to performing overhauls or
resolving equipment breakdowns, due to there being no spare
part(s). If spares are part of a piece of equipment necessary
for continued production, including associated safety systems,
then production will be lost if it is not available when
required.
Stock Theories and Practices
Inventory management is very time consuming if you
want to apply the best principles to all stock items. ABC
analysis is a technique to decrease this workload
substantially without materially affecting the cost of
stockholding. The stock is classified into three groups
based on value. These are:
A items:
those items with high stock value (price x quantity), but which
constitutes only a small proportion of stock items. Typically
the A item category includes only 10 to 15% of stock items,
but which contributes 70 to 75% of purchased value. For
these items tight control will be exercised with regular stock
reviews. The objective of this will be to keep the investment in
these items at an absolute minimum.
B items
those items with medium stock purchase value and a moderately
low number of commodities. Typically 25-35% of items fall in this
category at a cost of 15-20% of stockholding. Normal inventory
control with good records and regular attention should suffice in
this category.
C items
the remaining items (those with low value and high volume)
fall in this category. They typically constitute 50-65% of stock
items with a value of 5% of total purchased value. For such
items only simple controls are necessary. It is common
practice to establish a simple reordering procedure for such
items, which can be administered by clerical employees.
Minimum Maximum control
 Reporting
The CMMS facilitates the preparation of reports to
management. These reports aid management in taking
actions to improve the status of the maintenance
process. The reports should be based on actual data and
should be presented in summarized and graphical forms.
Statistical indicators and trends analysis must be an
integral part of such reports.
The maintenance department should have a regular
reporting system. Most maintenance departments have
what is called the monthly maintenance report. The
contents of such a report should reflect the status of
maintenance and provides maintenance information to
the related manufacturing functions, such as :
operations, engineering, inventory planning, accounting,
and upper management
 Maintenance Strategies
When failure occurs it costs the organisation money
in form of costs incurred on repairing the failure or
costs due to safety or costs due to lost of production.
That determines the existence of maintenance
department in the organisation(s).
In order to manage these processes properly there
should be maintenance strategies should be applied.
The effects of failures are negative in an organisation
Types of maintenance strategies
▪ Design out strategy:
This is not really a pure maintenance strategy, but is listed as
such because it is used extensively by maintenance engineers.
The objective is to redesign the particular system or
component to decrease the need for maintenance by
removing unwanted failure modes.
▪ Preventive Maintenance:
All maintenance strategies aimed at preventing failure from
occurring are of the class Preventive Maintenance. The
traditional way of preventing failure from occurring is by
replacing or reconditioning the item (sub-system or
component) before failure occurs. The types of preventive
maintenance are as follows:
 TYPES OF PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE STRATEGIES

Age based maintenance:

maintenance actions are undertaken regularly based on the
age of the equipment. Examples are scheduled maintenance
work based on machine running hours, tonnage handled,
production throughput and kilometers travelled.
Calendar based maintenance :
These tasks can be classified into of the following broad
classes:
▪ Scheduled overhaul -the machine or component is
completely stripped and reconditioned to as near as the
good-as-new condition as is possible
Scheduled replacement
the item (sub-assembly or component) is discarded and
replaced
Routine services
the plant/machine receives a service during which routine
checks are made, oils and filters changed, greasing done and
adjustments made.
 Special categories of used based maintenance
▪ Block replacement:
similar components should have similar failure frequencies.
▪ Opportunistic maintenance:
tasks will be done only when the plant is down.
Predictive (Condition Based) Maintenance
The condition of the equipment/component is measured at
predetermined intervals, so to determine when the
component will fail. Only then will a replacement/overhaul be
scheduled.
Two main types of condition based maintenance can be
identified:
Inspection -use is made of the five senses of a person
(engineer, foreman, artisan) to determine the condition of the
equipment or component. This can include the use of
instruments that enhances the use of the senses through
amplification or benchmarking.
Condition monitoring -some parameter is monitored to
detect signs of imminent failure. Examples of these are: (see
attachment 1 for details of these)
Vibration , Shock Pulse , Oil condition , Acoustic emissions ,
Equipment Performance, Thermography
 Corrective (Failure) Maintenance
This is a strategy of 'do nothing' or 'wait for failure'. It entails
not trying to determine when the component will fail
(condition monitoring or inspection) or doing anything to
prevent the failure from occurring (use based). This is used
when no other strategy can be applied with better end
results. Corrective maintenance can be further classified into
the following three classes:
▪ Replacement
this will be the strategy if the decision was to totally replace
the component or unit upon failure.
▪ Repair
this will be the strategy if the decision was to repair the
component or unit upon failure.
▪ Delayed decision
this will be the strategy if the decision was to either
totally replace the component or unit upon failure or to
repair it, based on a in loco inspection following failure.
Pro-active Maintenance
Pro-active maintenance is a philosophy that spans the whole
of the maintenance strategy structure as shown above.
Instead of using information gained from monitoring (or other
means) to predict when a failure will occur, the same
information is used to eradicate failure completely. Pro-active
action is taken to completely remove the root cause of failure.
To implement such a method, the correct instrumentation
must be available to facilitate the necessary measurements
being taken. Design-out plays a major role in Pro-active
Maintenance.
 ASSET REGISTER
Is a record of all the physical (fixed) assets in the company exceeding a
certain value.[i.e. machines, vehicles & plant (not stationary, inventory)]
It is required:
▪ for asset control / asset management
▪ allocation of expenditure
▪ for maintenance history
▪ forms a main part of CMMS
 Asset numbering

Asset numbering is a method of developing an asset identification, this is by means of using a

unique numbering system attached to an asset.
▪ vehicles: use registration number
▪ Fixed assets: generate a number set to easily identify the asset i.e. lathe001etc.
▪ Newer asset numbers are generated by a bar coding system, thus enhancing asset tracking.
▪ The vehicle registration number is displayed on the number plate and license disc.
▪ Each engine and some components have a unique stamped number.
▪ A number tag can be affixed using a plate and rivet.
▪ Barcodes are affixed by glued strip. Ideal for smaller assets i.e. computers, printers.
 Asset Numbering Systems

▪ Numerical system
▪ Alphabets
▪ Roman numbers
▪ Alpha numeric
▪ Any combination of numbering system.
 Physical Numbering Techniques

▪ Tags
▪ Welding
▪ Paint
▪ Reverts
▪ Punch
▪ etc.
 Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA)
Document #: Issue date: Revision #: Revision date:

Process: Process owner: Project ID: Project title:

How can the process go What is the impact if it How What could cause the OCC of What controls exist to Rate of SEVxOCCx What are the actions for reducing the occurrence of the causes or
Identify process steps wrong? goes wrong severe? failure to occur? causes prevent or detect? detect DET for improving the detection What were the actions implemented

Process Step Potential Failure Potential Failure Current Controls Recommended Corrective Action Corrective Action
SEV Potential Causes OCC DET RPN
(Or product part) Mode Effect (prevention/detection)
What? Who? When? Action Taken SEV OCC DET RPN
Missing of some Provide stronger
Lack of attention Using of an order-
1 Take order required Incorrect order 3 4 2 24 validation (order taking
(taking orders) taking checklist
information system)
2
Broken of
Wrong amount of equipment or Periodic inspection of
3 Prepare order Defective product 4 1 3 12 -
ingredients measurement equipment or instr.
instr.
Lack of attention
Inspection of product Buy hi-tech inspection
4 " " " 4 (mixing of 3 4 48
before delivery device
ingredients)
5
Wrong customer Lack of attention Using of a customer
6 Deliver order Missed delivery 4 3 1 12 -
address (taking orders) tracking system
Hire more people to
Takes too long to Traffic jam or too Using of GIS
7 " Delayed delivery 3 3 3 27 delivery and buy more
deliver products many orders technology
delivery cars
8

10

11

12

Continuous Improvement Toolkit . www.citoolkit.com

ITEM POTENTIAL FAILURE MODE POTENTIAL EFFECT OF FAILURE S POTENTIAL CAUSES O D RPN RECOMMENDED ACTIONS
Bearing Wear Loss of material, plastic flow 5 Normal&abrasive wear 3 3 45 Polishing
Scratching Draining of oil
Overhead Free fromLoad
Decrease foreign Material
Proper selection of Material

Breakage Damage system 3 Overload 3 3 27 Proper selection of material

Fatigue Estimate of Load
Scoring Heat treatment and hardening

Handling Unbalance driving; wear out components due to friction 3 Higher load 2 3 18 Check for mishandling and noise
Low lubrication Replace the bearing and check lubrication
Improper installation

Lubrication Frictional wear Wear in components; heating; smoke; engine seize 3 Low level of lubricant 2 4 24 Refill the lubrication, drain if more dirty
Impurities
Leakage in sump tank

Main shafts and counter-shaft Wear Loss of material, plastic flow 4 Normal & abrasive, scratching overload 4 3 48 Smoothing
Polishing
Draining of oil
Free from foreign material
Decrease load
Proper selection of material

Vibration Power loss 4 Misalignment 2 2 16 Proper placement of shaft

Gear tooth Wear Loss of material, plastic flow 5 Normal & abrasive wear, Scratching 4 5 100 Smoothing
Overload Polishing
Draining of oil
Free from foreign oil
Decrease load
Proper selection of material

Fatigue Breaking of tooth 3 Repeated pitting 3 2 18 Polish down the surface irregularities
Formation of cavities Metallurgical surface hardening
Grinding of tooth

Scoring Removal of material 4 Slight scoring 4 2 32 Extreme pressure lubrication

Tears and scratches Severe scoring Polished tooth
Degree of welding High surface stress Metallurgically hardening

Burning Surface denotations 3 Over speed 2 1 6 Extreme pressure lubricants

Irregular stress distribution discoloration High temperature Not being run in excess of their rated loads
and speed capacities.
Material selection

Breakage Damage of system 4 Overload 3 3 36 Proper selection of material

Fatigue Estimation of load
Scoring Heat treatment and metallurgical hardening