Reliability Centered Maintenance
Rami M.Ahmed
![Rami M.Ahmed]()
Rami M.Ahmed
Senior Electrical Engineer | COMPEX | O&G | Maintenance & Reliability| Testing | Assessor City&Guilds of London institute | Project | Engineering | MBA candidate
what is R.C.M. stands for?
- R.C.M is defined as the process of determining the most effective maintenance approach.
- R.C.M employs the approach of preventive maintenance (P.M.), predictive maintenance (P.D.M), real-time monitoring (R.T.M), run to fail/ reactive maintenance (R.T.F) and proactive maintenance techniques in an integrated manner to increase the probability of the machine will function in required manner over its designed life cycle with minimum maintenance.
- The goal of the (R.C.M.) philosophy is to provide the stated function of the facility with the required reliability and availability at lowest cost.
- R.C.M. = Good Condition Equipment + Reliability + Availability |low cost.
What are the primary R.C.M principles?
- R.C.M. Is Function Obtained it seeks to preserve system or equipment function, (not just operability. redundancy of the function, through multiple equipment, improves functional reliability, but increases life cycle cost in terms of procurement and operating costs.
- R.C.M is system focused it's more concerned with maintaining system function than individual component function.
- R.C.M. reliability centered it treads failure statistics, as the relation between operating age and the failure experienced is important. R.C.M is n't concerned with simple failure rate, its to know the conditional probability of failure at specific aging. (the probability of failure will occur in each given operating age bracket).
- R.C.M knowledges design limitations its objective is to maintain the inherent reliability of the equipment design, recognizing that the changes in inherent reliability are the province of design rather than maintenance. maintenance can achieve and maintain the level of reliability for equipment which provided by the design. R.C.M recognizes that maintenance feedback can improve on the original design. R.C.M recognizes that a difference often exists between the perceived design life and actual design life.
- R.C.M is driven by safety and economics safety must be ensured at any cost.
- R.C.M defines failure as any unsatisfactory condition, failure may be either a loss of function (operation ceases) or a loss of acceptable quality (operation continuous).
- R.C.M uses a logic tree to screen maintenance tasks.
- R.C.M. tasks must be applicable The tasks must address the failure mode and consider the failure mode characteristics.
- R.C.M must be effective The tasks must reduce the probability of failure and be cost effective.
- R.C.M acknowledges Three types of maintenance tasks: a- Time-directed (P.M.)- Scheduled when appropriate. b- Condition-directed (P.D.M. and real-time monitoring)- performed when conditions indicate they are needed. c- Failure finding (one of several aspects of proactive maintenance)- Equipment is run to failure. this is acceptable for some situations and some types of equipment.
- R.C.M is living system it gathers data from results achieved and feeds this data back to improve design and future maintenance.
to be continued!