The implementation of a Reliability Centered Maintenance or RCM program begins with a solid and practical Preventive Maintenance (PM) program. Implementing a PM program requires a critical and in-depth review of the operations and equipment within the business. An overview of an actual implementation follows.

A manufacturing business with 2,400 employees in four plants had over 3,000 pieces of production equipment ranging from instrumentation and state-of-the-art, sophisticated machining centers to 100 year old forge presses. Virtually all maintenance was done in a reactive mode: If something broke, Maintenance was informed and a craftsman was assigned to facilitate the necessary repairs. The company implemented very successful PM, PdM, and RCM programs coupled with a continuous improvement program and a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), over a period of less than four years.

One of the first programs identified, as a necessary foundation from which to build, was a solid and practical PM program. The initial program took nine months to develop and began with the assignment of individuals to a PM task team. Individuals were chosen from maintenance supervision, maintenance planning, and the trades for the nine-person team.

Initially, the team looked at segregating the business operations into four major groupings:

1) Government-owned equipment
2) Safety-related equipment
3) Facilities equipment
4) Manufacturing equipment

This company was a government contractor, and, as such, utilized some Government-owned equipment in its manufacturing process. The requirements of maintaining this type of equipment are quite specific. Hence, PM’s were critical on this equipment due to contractual issues.

Once the four major groupings were defined, they were prioritized with the most critical grouping being Government-owned followed by safety-related, facilities, and manufacturing. With over 3,000 separate pieces of equipment to maintain, the implementation of a comprehensive PM program appeared daunting at first. The plan, however, was to break down the implementation into manageable bites. The team decided, once the four major groupings were identified, that only the critical equipment in each grouping would be put on the PM program initially. The total number of pieces of equipment initially were limited to 250 pieces.

The finalized PM work order instructions for each of the 250 pieces in the core PM program were completed, and the maintenance planners developed a schedule for which PMs would be done and when during the calendar year. The maintenance planners leveled the PM work orders throughout the year to allow for a relative level loading of man-hours on a weekly basis.

In the following two and a half years, all of the equipment in the plants was added to the PM program with a total of over 3,000 within a little over three years from the inception of the PM program. The format used for PM work instruction development was followed on subsequent equipment additions to the program. New equipment to the plant operations utilized the manufacturer’s recommendations until such time as sufficient experience was gained by Maintenance to adjust the PM work instructions and frequencies. The intent was not to have a static PM program, but insure it was dynamic to meet the changing business needs coupled with the experience gained in maintaining the equipment.

As the traditional PM program was developed, additional predictive maintenance (PdM) methodologies were implemented for appropriate equipment such as lubrication analysis, thermography, vibration analysis, etc. The PM program coupled with PdM and the data accumulated with a CMMS allowed maintenance to enter RCM. Reliability Centered Maintenance addresses the root cause of problems rather than just production reliability. Typically, organizations do not see the benefits of RCM initially, and, rather, see it as an additional and unnecessary expense to the business since benefits are not immediately noticeable.

For instance, some equipment may be taken out of service more frequently or for longer periods than prior to RCM. This translates into reduced availability to operations in the initial phase. However, the intent in doing so is to identify and address the root causes of failures thereby improving the cost effectiveness of equipment to the business. In other words, the equipment will operate more reliably long term over the traditional PM program.

LUBRICATION PROGRAM: This business realized it did not have the resources in-house to implement and maintain an effective lubrication program in the areas of program development, people to do the work, and equipment to analyze and monitor. The decision was made to contract with an outside source to implement and manage the entire program.

The lubrication program followed a similar implementation strategy as the PM program. Only certain critical equipment was selected to be included in the initial start-up of the program. Equipment was selected in part due to its criticality to the business, redundancy of equipment (such as three of dozens of similar machining centers), historical problems which appeared to be lubrication-oriented, and of such a nature to test the resources of the lubrication vendor.

Once equipment was identified, the lubrication vendor conducted a thorough analysis of each piece of equipment to determine its current state. Recommendations were made to the business as to the correct lubricants and coolants to use for each application. The lubrication vendor assumed full responsibility for the lubrication requirements including sample collection, analysis, reporting, monitoring, recommendations to the business for maintenance on the equipment relative to lubrication, training of the business’s employees in the proper methods to lubricate equipment, etc.

THERMOGRAPHY: A thermography program was developed, concentrating on the electrical substations and switchgear initially for the four plants. The program was developed by the plant electrical engineer. Actual thermographic monitoring was contracted out to a vendor with the expertise and equipment necessary to do effective thermography.

The results of the thermographic studies, conducted as part of the PM program, were translated into planned maintenance work orders for completion as scheduled by the maintenance planners. Much of the work on substations and switchgear was scheduled for annual plant shutdown outages unless it was indicated that the problems had to be addressed sooner.

VIBRATION ANALYSIS: Vibration was measured on selected equipment due to its criticality to the business and high rotating speeds. Air compressors were the primary equipment monitored by the plants.

The data collected from these programs along with data from other sources, such as the Instrumentation and Calibration Program, were feed into the CMMS as the central repository. Access to the data was not limited to any individuals or job positions. However, only selected people were authorized to make entries or change any data to insure system integrity.

Process Improvement Teams were formed within maintenance with representatives from the trades and staff of maintenance. The teams were trained in Continuous Improvement and process improvement techniques including:

• Data Collection
• Data Evaluation
• Problem Solving
• Statistical Process Control
• Control Charts
• Pareto Charts
• Histograms
• Failure Rate Run Charts
• Failure Rate vs. Maintenance Costs
• Weibul Analysis
• Mean Time Between Failures
• Root Cause Failure Analysis

Utilizing the results obtained allowed the PM and PdM programs to be tailored specifically to the operating conditions of the equipment. In addition, problem solving identified the root causes for the most common and most expensive failures of equipment. Operating expense savings were realized with RCM along with an increase in manufacturing equipment uptime.

In addition to comprehensive PM, PdM, and RCM programs and process improvement teams, the involvement of people from all levels within Maintenance dramatically increased the collection and utilization of good data within the CMMS. Additionally, the craftsmen and salaried people within Maintenance increased their knowledge and use of the CMMS. An additional off-shoot was the interest in the data collected in the CMMS by people in organizations outside of maintenance, such as Finance, Purchasing, Manufacturing, Engineering, Environmental-Health-Safety, etc. who saw an additional resource available to them to assist them in their daily jobs.

A preventive maintenance program, properly designed, implemented, and utilized, is critical for any Maintenance organization trying to move into the world class category. It is, also, a critical success factor for Reliability Centered Maintenance. Success for this business was dependent upon the proper identification and utilization of outside resources, training, and team facilitation throughout the processes in this case study.

© February, 1995
R. L. Steibly, CPE & Certified Senior Consultant
Steibly & Associates
Asset Care Management Consultants
Office: 802-747-7220
Email: steibly@earthlink.net