Reliability-Centered Maintenance, often known as RCM, is an industrial improvement approach focused on identifying and establishing the operational, maintenance, and capital improvement policies that will manage the risks of equipment failure most effectively. It is defined by the technical standard SAE JA1011, Evaluation Criteria for RCM Processes.

Historical Background

The term RCM first became widely known as the title of a U.S. government report, Reliability-Centered Maintenance, written by F. Stanley Nowlan and Howard F. Heap, former senior executives at United Airlines. Published in 1978, the report described efforts by commercial airlines in the 1960s and 70s to improve the relibility of their new jet airliners. The first generation of jet passenger airliners had a crash rate that would be considered highly alarming today, and both the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) and the airlines' senior mangement felt strong pressure to improve matters. Since the airplane and engine manufacturers insisted that their products were completely reliable, the onus fell at first on the airlines' maintenance staffs.

In the early 1960s, with FAA approval the airlines began to conduct a series of intensive engineering studies on in-service aircraft. The studies proved that the fundamental assumption of design engineers and maintenance planners -- that every airplane and every major component in the airplane (such as its engines) had a specific "lifetime" of reliable service, after which it had to be replaced (or its guts had to be replaced) in order to prevent failures -- was wrong in nearly every specific example in a complex modern jet airliner.

This astounding discovery led to the beginnings of what today is called Condition Based Maintenance. More importantly, it led to criteria for methods to be used to manage the risks of equipment failure ... because equipment-wide restoration or discard was indeed sometimes called-for. It was also because sometimes neither policy would work, one example being a back-up motor that is normally idle. It was also because sometimes maintenance itself was the wrong approch: sometimes the very equipment itself -- perhaps as it was designed, or perhaps as it was installed -- was so unreliable that no amount of maintennce was going to keep it going.

As it turned out, this last situation was the situation with the jet airliners. However, it took the well-organized work of the airlines' maintenance managers to prove to the designers and the regulators that -- and where -- the designs needed to be changed. RCM is the distilled version of the lessons they learned during that process.

Basic Features

Nowlan and Heap's RCM recognized three principal risks from equipment failures: threats

• to safety,
• to operations, and
• to the maintenance budget.

Modern RCM adds threats to the environment, though it treats them as threats to safety.

RCM offers four principal options among the risk management strategies:

• on-condition maintenance tasks,
• scheduled restoration or discard maintenance tasks,
• failure-finding maintenance tasks, and
• one-time changes to the "system" (changes to hardware design, to operations, or to other things).

RCM also offers specific criteria to use when selecting a risk management strategy for a system that presents a specific risk when it fails. Some are technical in nature (can the proposed task detect the condition it needs to detect? does the equipment actually wear out, with use?). Others are goal-oriented (is it reasonably likely that the proposed task-and-task-frequency will reduce the risk to a tolerable level?). The criteria are often presented in the form of a decision-logic diagram, though this is not intrinsic to the nature of the process.

RCM In Use

After being created by the commercial aviation industry, RCM was adopted by the U.S. military (beginning in the mid-1970s) and by the U.S. commercial nuclear power industry (in the 1980s). It began to enter other commercial industries and fields in the early 1990s.

It is probably clear from the account of RCM's basic features that it is a highly complex analytic process. Starting in the late 1980s, a series of independent initiatives sprang up that were intended to reduce the process's complexity without reducing its benefits. A partial list of these initiatives would include:

• RCM II,
• "Blitz" RCM,
• "Streamlined" RCM,
• "RCM Turbo", and
• "Preventive Maintenance Optimization," or PMO.

Since each initiative is sponsored by one or more consulting firms eager to help clients use it, there is still considerable disagreement about their relative merits (and dangers).

Nonetheless, everyone well-acquainted with RCM seems to agree that a thorough application of the RCM analytic process is still the most flexible and comprehensive tool available for identifying the actions that need to be taken to ensure that the risks of equipment failure are reduced to a tolerable level.

Further reading

^* Standard To Define RCM, (Part 1), Dana Netherton, Maintenance Technology (1998)

^* Standard To Define RCM, (Part 2), Dana Netherton, Maintenance Technology (1998)

References

Evaluation Criteria for Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM) Processes. Society of Automotive Engineers. Pittsburgh, PA. 1999. SAE

Guidelines for the Naval Aviation Reliability Centered Maintenance Process. Department of Defense. Washington, D.C. NAVAIR 00-25-403

Moubray, John. Reliability-Centered Maintenance. Indistrial Press. New York, NY. 1997. ISBN 0-8311-3146-2

MSG-3. Maintenance Program Development Document. Air Transport Association, Washington, D.C. Revision 2, 1993.

Nowlan, F. Stanley, and Howard F. Heap. Reliability-Centered Maintenance. Department of Defense, Washington, D.C. 1978. Report Number AD-A066579.

Planned Maintenance System: Development of Maintenance Requirement Cards, Maintenance Index Pages, and Associated Documentation. Naval Sea Systems Command. Washington, D.C. Military Specification MIL-P-24534A(NAVY). 1985.

Reliability-Centered Maintenance Handbook. Naval Sea Systems Command. Washington, D.C. Handbook S9081-AB-GIB-010/MAINT. October 1983.

Reliability-Centered Maintenance Requirements for Naval Aircraft, Weapons Systems and Support Equipment. Department of Defense. Washington, D.C. MIL-STD 2173(AS) (now cancelled)

Reliability Centered Maintenance