This post is part of a ten-part series aimed at increasing the awareness of RCM as a fundamental element of asset management. We are driving to stop poor practice being thought of as leading practice!

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No matter where you travel throughout the world you hear this statement. The result of failed implementations and smart marketing, this statement has allowed several splinter methodologies to spring up all over the world. Risk Based Inspection, Safety Instrumented Systems, and more recently Risk Based Maintenance are all derivative methodologies that have sprung up, each with an extremely narrow focus.


For example, RBI is focused only on the containment function whereas SIS focuses purely on the Hidden safety functions and so on. The appearance of these splinter methodologies has also given rise to entire industries, each one protecting their commercial interests by promoting very restricting barriers to entry.


First, why is it a problem? Regardless of the technical integrity of each of these methods, there are some substantial problems caused by the implementation of splinter methods.


For instance; when implementing RCM the analysts need to focus very closely on the expertise and experience of a range of methodologies and disciplines. This immediately allows for a fully cross functional approach to be developed to the management of the physical asset base. Operations, instrumentation technicians, maintenance mechanics, maintenance electricians, equipment inspectors, safety and management are just some of the managerial disciplines that could become involved in an RCM analysis.


There are many benefits of a cross functional approach, but the principle advantage is that all stakeholders are able to be involved in defining the functions and failure management strategies for a given physical asset, the secondary advantage is that management disciplines begin to work across the artificial barriers created within many companies, contributing greatly to the wider task of asset management.


This ensures a focus on all of the functions, and on their impacts on other areas of the asset, rather than focusing on the asset from a one dimensional point of view. Within RBI, for example, a lot of effort is rightly spent on analyzing the degradation rates of metals, using generally corrosion and operations expertise. Driven by inspectors, with a lot of input from closely related disciplines, the output is often predictable.


An inspection plan, which does not identify itself as maintenance, which is often managed, scheduled and executed via different resources than maintenance plans, reinforcing artificial barriers within the workforce regarding the management of the physical assets. If you look at it on a larger scale you get inspectors permanently separating themselves from maintainers, certification processes that only certify inspectors rather than including others who have been trained in reliability techniques, and it all becomes an effort in self preservation and protection.

Yet this is only a small part of RCM.

From the very beginning RCM has included a focus on static equipment; in fact chapter 9 of the original report was titled “RCM Analysis of Structures”. It recognized that with structural items almost all functional failures will have an impact on safety, meaning that most of the failure modes fell directly into the Safety consequence category of the decision diagram. However, it did not restrict itself to the containment function only, recognizing that structural and fixed assets often have more functions than are readily evident.

It also recognized that failure in structural items meant only one of two possible routine maintenance outcomes;

• On-condition inspections for all items, and


• Preventive replacement for safe-life elements

The focus of RCM in structures is on managing the “fatigue life” of the asset, incorporating all of the possible causes or accelerants of fatigue such as load changes and variance and corrosion, focusing directly on areas that are often described as not suitable for an RCM analysis.


In summary, RCM as it was originally intended is an extremely adequate tool for the analysis and management of structural and fixed assets such as vessels, piping, civil structures and supports. It allows these assets to continue to be analyzed within the multi functional framework provided by RCM and allows for the creation of detailed and concise inspection plans as part of the larger asset maintenance plan.

This post is a continuation in the 10 part series to expose the myths and legends associated with implementing RCM as a central pillar for modern asset management.

The advice to apply RCM to only critical assets, offered by many consultancies, is an attempt to counter the effects of Myth 1. This goes to the heart of why these myths can be counterproductive, instead of dealing with the issue of inefficient implementation; focus often turns to tampering with the method itself.

There are two issues here that need to be dealt with; first what exactly is criticality and second what are the benefits of RCM over a larger asset base.

Criticality is probably one of the most overused terms within the field of asset maintenance. At its core it is an attempt to determine the relative importance of assets within a company, plant or process.

The reasons are many and include sequencing of assets for analysis and other improvement efforts, the prioritization of corrective works in progress, and the determination of which capital spending.

However, with a lack of an agreed upon definition for criticality we see a range of methods, used in a range of ways, all of which clouds the issue relating to criticality and relative importance assessments.

So what is more important? An operational pump with no back up that will take out processes at a rate of $10,000 per hour once it fails; or a hydraulic pump that closes a gate on the entrance to the plant? And… there is an additional entrance to the plant.

It appears to be an obvious question, on the face of things it would appear that a loss of $10,000 per hour wins hands down.

But how about if the failure of the relief valve on the hydraulic pump, under fault conditions, caused the gate to close with fatal pressure, creating a potential hazard to life?

Now the entire dynamic changes, after detailed analysis the pump may still be more critical, or maybe not. The point is that you cannot determine true criticality without understanding all of the reasonably likely failure modes, and their impacts, of the asset under consideration.

This is not an isolated example; many analyses of “non-critical” assets have produced critical failure modes.

In a recent evaluation of pumping stations for a European utility many of them were classed as high criticality due to the populations and volumes that they managed. On review it was found that due to the gases that were present at some of the lower criticality sites they actually had consequences of failure far higher than some of their “more important counterparts.

It is obviously inefficient to analyze all assets to a failure mode level in order to determine which should be included in an RCM analysis. But when it is done at an asset level, rather than at a failure mode level, is often a prioritization approach of the primary function of the asset; or it is based on guesses and assumptions.

Even so, prioritizing assets based on their primary function and its relation to corporate objectives is a perfectly valid and justifiable practice; even if it is not based on real criticality.
So should RCM be applied to only high importance assets?

There are many documented and reported benefits of a rigorous implementation of Reliability-centered Maintenance. However, one that everybody seems to agree on is that where there is an existing maintenance schedule in place, it will provide a dramatic reduction in routine tasks. (Moubray quoted this as up to 70% in some cases)

If we restrict the application of RCM to assets of high importance only, then we are ruling out a reduction of routine maintenance over the remainder of the asset base.

As this series has already illustrated, the impact of many assets cannot be established until their failure modes and their consequences have been identified. So by restricting the RCM process we are also leaving assets that may have potentially large scale failure consequences in the areas of safety or operations.

The benefits of RCM are well established and there is no need to go through all of them here.

In brief, they include;

• reduction of levels of risk of failure,
• increases in cost effectiveness,
• increases in effective labor utilization,
• turnaround scope planning, and
• feeding sophisticated techniques on whole-of-life asset management and risk-distributed budgeting

If RCM can be implemented in a rapid and beneficial manner, then any approach that restricts the scope of the analysis project also restricts the value we are able to get out of the physical asset base. Does this mean RCM should be applied to every asset? Probably not; but it should definitely be applied to the majority if it is cost effective to do so.

If this article was of interest to you I hope you would recommend it to others within your operations. Please feel free to send me an email regarding this or any other themes on this site.

This article is part of a ten part series of posts looking to expose some of th emyths surrounding RCM in modern asset management. Unfortunately as the method becomes more and more popular the list of detractors gets longer and longer. Often with the result of making poor practice common practice.

Since it was popularized at the beginning of the 1990’s, Reliability-centered Maintenance (RCM) has had its fair share of detractors as well as supporters. While some objections have been justified, many are the result of misunderstandings, misinformation, or misapplication of the concepts and techniques.

In the past many approaches with little or nothing to do with the original report by Stanley Nolan and Howard Heap, were often promoted as RCM processes. This contributed greatly to some of the confusion around today. However, with the publication in 1999 of the RCM Standard, SAE JA1011, companies now have the means of determining whether a process is or is not an RCM process prior to implementing it.

Despite the publication and widespread adoption of this standard the “noise” regarding RCM has continued. Often this has been the result of bad prior implementation experiences, but in some cases it is a deliberate effort by those with commercial interests in the area.[1]
This has had three, mainly negative, impacts globally;

1. Many companies who could have benefited greatly from implementing RCM have been discouraged from doing so.
   
2. In an attempt to continue obtaining some of the benefits offered by implementing rigorous RCM, many streamlined, or cut down versions have appeared. While some of these do achieve some of the benefits of RCM, some of these methods are actively counterproductive and even dangerous.
   
3. Lastly, many “new” techniques have appeared in areas where RCM could easily have been applied with great effect. This has served to reinforce artificial work barriers, as well as to create even further disconnection in asset management approaches.
   

Many of these “myths” have created the unfortunate situation where inefficient and sometimes dangerous approaches are accepted as leading practice.

The intention of this paper is to scrutinize some of the myths and legends that have sprung up around RCM.

Myth 1. RCM requires a lot of resources to implement and maintain

This is by far the most common of the statements made regarding RCM. Unfortunately it has a basis in fact.

Since it was popularized in the early 1990’s it has been sold to the asset maintenance community as a method that could only be properly implemented via a facilitated group. This required many of the leading people to be off line, sometimes for weeks at a time, running through the seven questions that make up the method.

In fact, when people talk today about “classical” RCM they are often referring to this mode of implementation, rather than any specific methodology. In fact, this paradigm alone is responsible for many of the streamlined versions of the method that exist today.

Fortunately, it is totally false.

That RCM requires the input of knowledgeable professionals for the assets under consideration is not in question. It is ludicrous to seriously consider that one person, no matter how expert, could have all of the information to perform an accurate analysis.
But there is no way in the lean companies of today that the most knowledgeable professionals can be taken offline to sit through an analysis, let alone an entire implementation project. In fact trying to continue with this outdated practice usually leads to:

• Less knowledgeable people being assigned to the team, or no representation at all. Watering down the rigorous nature of the analysis.
  
• Expertise for the analysis being limited to the professionals within the room, rather than the wider group of professionals existing in the outside world.
  
• Large period of inactivity and boredom by participants when they are working through areas not related to their expertise.
  

Of all the above problems with this outdated approach it is the final one that frustrated me the most when implementing RCM in this fashion. Often the functional definitions involve everybody, while failure modes are driven mainly by maintainers and failure effects mainly by operators.

A more practical approach this to use a combination of short duration facilitated workshops, targeted interviews (One on One, One on two etcetera) and make full use of the RCM facilitator in more of an analytical role.

Another tool that modern technology has enabled is that of rapid implementation templates, technique that allows the Analyst to maintain the level of rigor, while speeding up the process dramatically.

The result is a facilitated process, rather than a facilitated workshop. Experience shows that this approach can often reduce the resource requirement by operational professionals by up to 60%, while maintaining the rigor that any reliability process should have.

This is an entirely different role than that of an RCM facilitator and it requires a different more precise skill set. One that focuses on investigation and the application of logic, as well as the skills required for rapid and accurate facilitation.

This is the first in a ten-part series of articles looking to expose some of the myths and legends surrounding RCM. If it has been of interest or use to you I hope you would recommend this page to a co-worker or colleague.

Myth 2. RCM should only be applied to critical assets

Myth 3. RCM is only for rotating equipment not for static equipment

Myth 4. RCM does not support whole-of-life asset management

Myth 5. RCM requires large amounts of data before it can commence