February 01, 2007
RCM and Sustainable Results - Commentary
President, SUCCESS by DESIGN
The rules created for Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM) by Nowlan and Heap were built upon maintenance research performed by the FAA and several airlines, including their employer, United Airlines. These rules were put in place to develop a risk-based maintenance program supported by fact and ACTUAL NEED. The military contracted Nowlan and Heap to create the RCM document, which was published in 1976 and was subsequently used for developing the maintenance programs for military aircraft and weapons.
The rules were then applied to military-owned equipment with great success. Somewhere along the way, these principals were adopted by some manufacturing and industrial firms. This was followed by a number of consultants who worked on differentiating themselves from their peers by adopting the rules and/or calling their offering by a different name. There are numerous other details, such as how critical equipment is determined, boundaries set for analysis, how the FMEA is performed, how the frequency of maintenance is determined, etc. In general, most systems met the principles set forth by the original document, which is now referred to as Classical RCM. Later, a collaborative group set up the SAE JA1011, which is a standard that covers the minimum requirements and definition for programs calling themselves RCM.
However, one of the primary defects in the unsuccessful sustainment of a program by many of these groups was a continuous improvement back-end. Such sustainment programs developed within the military include the Maintenance Effectiveness Review (MER). These powerful tools allow the R&M specialist to periodically review the maintenance developed by the RCM process. Without the continuous improvement aspect of the MER, the front end process must be overly-intensive, resulting in excessive time and costs in association with RCM-based maintenance development.
Now, just as with the ‘Lean’ programs of the 1990’s (and going on still), organizations pop up touting some new, wonderful, version of RCM. All you have to do is sign up with them and they will do everything, or provide a canned program and will work hard to ensure that they have a permanent position within your company, or until the costs become too excessive and the program is killed. Only a handful of the commercial applications of RCM, that I have seen, actually survive.
What is particularly interesting is that military-based RCM programs are implemented for far less cost than civilian programs with SUSTAINABLE results. There are a number of opportunities with the military structure. However, there is also the primary benefit of patience in the development and application of programs. This is important as the full benefits of a program are not felt for 12 to 24 months from implementation with support.
The real question relates to the opportunities for the program. How can a program be implemented in a civilian organization in a way that it can be sustainable? For one thing, the training and consulting organization brought in to assist the company must be there to COACH the organization, not to do all the work with the intent of being a permanent fixture in the organization. We will be continuing some level of discussion of the RCM/CBM process as it can have an impact on a successful motor management program.
