We’ve all seen the effects of unplanned disruption to the global supply chain. Once one weak part of the chain goes under, the whole system disarray. But, through the use of reliability centered maintenance, you can minimize the amount of risk and even limit its damage.
Practical, economical, dependable, and safe maintenance is the goal of reliability centered maintenance (RCM). Preventative, predictive, or non-destructive inspections are all examples of maintenance chores. But, if you’re unfamiliar with the inner workings of RCM, no worries. You’ve come to the right place.
Keep on reading for our full breakdown of everything you need to know about reliability centered maintenance. We’ll discuss how it’s implemented in the logistics industry and more.
What Is Reliability Centered Maintenance?
Professionals first used Reliability centered maintenance (RCM) in aviation. They used it to detect possible issues with your assets. It helped them determine what they need to do to ensure that those assets continue to perform at total capacity.
To put it another way, RCM is an analysis of breakdowns that may help you identify the best maintenance procedures. Also, the schedules for each of your specific assets.
RCM is commonly confused with preventative maintenance, but there is one significant difference. RCM is selective, making it more efficient than preventive maintenance.
Reliability centered maintenance, when done effectively, saves inefficiency. It asks for thoroughly inspecting each asset before allocating maintenance activities. You can go here to take a look at a real-life example.
The Principles of Using Reliability Centered Maintenance
Any concrete maintenance strategy should come with identifiable principles. Otherwise, your ability to implement them becomes spotty at best and non-existent at worst.
Decision, analysis, and action may be split into three stages.
Phase 1: Decision
The decision-making process begins with answering the first three questions. Justification and planning are necessary to prevent squandering time. Consult with maintenance personnel and project leaders. Also, you can reach out to subject matter experts about preparedness and requirements.
Determining objectives following financial constraints, time constraints, and management considerations. All of those should be left to the decision-making stage.
A good rule of thumb is to look at prior data to get an idea of how much you’ve spent on maintenance in the past. It’s critical to do so before deciding on which pieces of equipment are most important.
In your decision-making process, ask yourself the following questions. Is it difficult to spot a problem with this equipment during routine maintenance?
Would it be dangerous if this machine broke down? What are the potential ramifications of a malfunction on this machine? How will a breakdown of this equipment affect the budget?
It’s much easier for your team to choose an operating capacity for the machine when creating a data-driven list.
Phase 2: Analysis
Before anything else, you and your team need to figure out what’s wrong with the system. Poor performance, the execution of pointless tasks, or outright failure are examples of this. A belt failure on a bottle capper, for example, would result in the machine coming to an abrupt halt.
Identifying and analyzing the consequences of the failure is the next stage in the analysis (s). Your group should keep a record of anything that may be seen or heard during a failure. What effect does it have on the total output? What impact does it have on public safety?
Finally, it is necessary to determine the reasons for failures in the analysis phase. Failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) is a prominent method for identifying these root causes.
All probable failures in the design, manufacturing, or assembly process and the product or service are broken down in this analysis approach by the number of errors. Consider the following issues.
- In terms of safety, how does this failure impact things?
- What are the ramifications for the operation and total output of this failure?
- What is the extent of the outage caused by this problem?
It is essential to consider a variety of factors while doing an FMEA. You’ll want to include the asset’s history and the experiences of the team or individual employees. In most FMEA analysis programs, the information gained is used to drive mitigation actions. It helps with discovering issues early or preventing them from occurring.
A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) is often used to streamline the analysis process in many businesses. By creating jobs and scheduling inspections, a CMMS aids in planning. It also reduces the likelihood that your team will miss planned work or equipment faults.
Phase 3: Implement and Act
Finally, it’s time to put your findings into action. You’ll want to make changes to your maintenance and system processes and asset designs. Proactive tasks and default actions may be grouped into two categories for failure management.
They are taking the initiative. To avoid breakdowns before they happen, they include predictive and preventative maintenance procedures. Predictive maintenance chores may assist in preventing breakdowns before they occur.
It’s invaluable while you can arrange proactive maintenance work in advance.
This refers to the practice of allowing a machine to operate until it breaks down and then trying to repair it. This kind of maintenance has been referred to as “run to failure” in the past.
Your RCM analysis and knowledge of how your failure modes influence your assets. It also affects your total output is critical to determining the optimal approach for your case.
Benefits of RCM in the Shipping Industry or Truck Fleet Management
Reliability centered maintenance focuses on the most critical aspects of a company’s operations. This way it can better protect against equipment failures and boost uptime and availability.
A crucial asset is one whose failure would have significant effects if it occurred often. This maintenance approach identifies likely failure modes and their repercussions. At the same time, it considers the equipment’s function.
You may use this information to identify cost-effective maintenance approaches. The facility’s overall dependability is improved by using the most effective strategies.
Simplifying the Logistics Foundation
You don’t want to wait until the last moment to try fixing a broken system. Thankfully, by using the power of reliability centered maintenance, you don’t even have to reach this stage of chaos.
We hope that our guide has shed some light on what makes RCM so effective and how to implement it for your business. And, if you are still hungry for more information, head straight to our business section for more tips and strategies.