Reliability-centered maintenance is a corporate-level maintenance strategy that is implemented to optimize the maintenance program of a company or facility. The expected result of an RCM program is the implementation of specific maintenance strategies on each of the assets of the facility.
There are four principles that are critical for a reliability centered maintenance program.
- The primary objective is to preserve system function
- Identify failure modes that can affect the system function
- Prioritize the failure modes
- Select applicable and effective tasks to control the failure modes
An effective reliability centered maintenance implementation examines the facility as a series of functional systems, each of which has inputs and outputs contributing to the success of the facility. The questions that need to be asked for each asset are:
- What are the functions and desired performance standards of each asset?
- How can each asset fail to fulfill its functions?
- What are the failure modes for each functional failure?
- What causes each of the failure modes?
- What are the consequences of each failure?
- What can and/or should be done to predict or prevent each failure?