What is Reliability Centered Maintenance?
Reliability Centered Maintenance prioritizes reliability – aka uptime. It’s all about optimizing performance, reducing downtime, and keeping costs down. With this approach, equipment is divided into three categories of maintenance:
Proactive maintenance
Regularly scheduled procedures (e.g. daily, weekly, monthly)
Condition-based maintenance
Maintenance is performed in response to data gathered through condition monitoring and inspections
Run-to-fault maintenance
Components are allowed to fail because maintenance would have no impact on when or whether they fail.
Our RCM services take a fresh approach to every plant and process, knowing there is no one-size-fits-all way to manage maintenance. We build a bespoke task list using a decision tree to prioritize key areas, then bring in our experience with both the technology and the process to develop detailed maintenance plans and inspection routines. The outcome is a tailored maintenance program specific to your plant, your operational context, and your equipment.
The RCM approach is not static but should be continually reviewed and renewed. We’ll remain in partnership with you for as long as you need.
1. Critical equipment is selected for RCM analysis.
2. For every asset chosen, you need to define its inputs and outputs, and the function of the system within which it operates.
3. List all the ways the system can fail to perform its function.
4. Identify the root causes for all these failure modes.
5. Explore how these failures would affect safety, operations, and other equipment.
6. Choose a proactive maintenance tactic for each failure mode that could reasonably be expected to occur.
7. Once the agreed maintenance tactics have been put into practice, you can review the results and decide if you need to make any changes based on the additional information you gather.
Just as the best equipment doesn’t guarantee you optimum performance, the best maintenance strategy can’t guarantee you absolute reliability. Success lies in the delivery of that strategy, which depends on the strength of your team. That’s why our RCM services include a training and mentoring plan for the team who will be carrying out the tasks we have identified.
Training includes an introduction to RCM, what it is, how it is being applied, and why it is effective. We also deliver theoretical and practical training on plant equipment, testing regimes, inspection methods, and so on, to give everyone the best possible foundation for future success. After the training, we run a mentoring program where our development people run through each of the maintenance routines with the plant teams responsible for executing the plan. This field-based period enables optimum knowledge transfer, and gives us all a chance to work out any kinks in the program.
Thanks to new technologies, it is much easier to take a proactive – or preventive – approach to maintenance than it was in the past. With condition monitoring tools, your assets can effectively warn you of potential failures before they occur, while advanced modelling enables us to anticipate maintenance needs and their broader impacts.
Partnering with us to develop your RCM strategy enables you to better prepare for maintenance works, ensuring you’re carrying out the right work, at the right time, with the right parts and tools to hand. It helps avoid both unplanned and unnecessary downtime, saving you money and bringing you peace of mind.
Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM)
We believe Reliability Centred Maintenance is an essential tool for an industry determined to increase sustainability. As cement plant operators come to understand the connection between equipment reliability and environmental impact, we expect more and more plants to undertake their own RCM implementation program.
The reliability fallacy: The key to sustainable cement production
What does your maintenance team want you to know about reliability, but is afraid to tell you? Jose Gil, Fuller, explains. Ask anyone working at a cement plant and all would agree that reliability – of equipment, of the process, of production output, of product quality – is critical. Fuller would also agree. In fact, the company even has Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM) service specifically designed to help cement plants prioritise reliability. Ask who is responsible for reliability and they would probably all point to the maintenance team. And here, Fuller would disagree.
The services that digital built
Jose Gil, Head of Service Execution, Fuller USA, discusses the evolution of digital and how this has resulted in a step change in delivering service and support.
