Deployment of RCM
Reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) is a rigorous and systematic process to optimize the maintenance strategy of assets. RCM is typically perceived as a laborious and time-consuming process - a bottom-up process. Performance forecasting and operational forecasting has been traditionally to simulate and quantify the performance of the asset based upon its reliability, maintainability and operability. One of the main KPIs produced by the end of the simulation is ranking of all production-critical equipment by quantifying their expected production loss. Depending on the level of details (e.g. aggregating all failure information into a single failure mode), performance forecasting may not capture the degree of details required to improve the maintenance strategy of a system or equipment.
What if companies were to combine the thoroughness of RCM and the advanced simulation capability of performance forecasting?
This allows a dynamic RCM process to take place, prioritizing the production-critical components and equipment items in the asset. Furthermore, this information can be used to drive the deployment of Failure Mode Effect Analysis (FMEA) and Failure Mode Effect and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) to understand the impact of the different maintenance strategies to the component reliability.