Reliability-Centered Maintenance

This paper provides an overview of the reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) engineering process. RCM is a unique tool used by reliability, safety, and/or maintenance engineers for developing optimum maintenance plans which define requirements and tasks to be performed in achieving, restoring, or maintaining the operational capability of a system or equipment. Implementing the RCM process requires the application of a decision logic that enables systematic analysis of failure mode, rate, and criticality data to determine the most effective maintenance requirements for maintenance-important items. It is through this process that the scheduled maintenance burden and support costs are reduced while sustaining the necessary readiness state. The RCM process is designed to focus engineering attention to the part level in a formal and disciplined manner leading logically to the formulation of a maintenance strategy and plan. RCM benefits include: *The development of high quality maintenance plans in less time and at lower cost. *The availability of a maintenace history for each system; one is able to correlate this experience with specific parts and their failure modes and criticalities. *The assurance that all maintenance-important parts and their failure modes and criticality are considered in the development of maintenance requirements. *The increased probability that the level and content of the maintenance requirement is optimally specified. *The basis for routine, on-line information exchange among the engineering staff and management even in a widely dispersed organization.