Reliability Centered Maintenance
The basic approach is to assess a machine by asking what its function is in a specific installation, how it might fail to meet that function, what the impact of that failure is and how might that failure be prevented or managed.
A typical RCM analysis looks at what function a machine serves is a particular installation. It goes beyond the simple “to pump water” to ask what system function it serves. The answer may include operating parameter limits, environmental stresses, operating cycle factors and any other function that is critical to meeting the designed need of the system. A typical analysis may include a few functions or many, depending on the installation.
Then we ask how can it fail to meet those functions. This is called functional failure. Function failure might be complete failure of the machine or it might just be a reduction in capacity to a point where the system needs are not met.
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After we determine all the ways functional failure might occur, we ask what the effect of that failure is. The effect might be safety related, business related, or some other effect. At this time we consider both the consequence (cost) of the failure and how likely it is to occur. Using both consequence and frequency we can rank the failures in order of importance.
Once we have the ordered list of failure, we than analyze each one to determine how they might be prevented. This may involve design changes, preventive maintenance routines, predictive maintenance tests and others. Our first objective is to remove the failure mode from the list. Lacking the ability to do that, we look for ways to reduce its frequency or consequence by periodic maintenance or testing.
The end result of an RCM analysis will be a list of proposed design changes, preventive maintenance tasks and predictive maintenance tests. This method results in an optimum set of actions, avoiding over maintaining the machine while still addressing significant failure modes.
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