RSA Reliability and Maintenance Consultancy Firm

Issue No. 51 - July 2011

Since establishing this website last May of 2007, I have made many efforts to improve this site and provide some useful insights about our common link which is all about improving our equipment reliability and the way we do maintenance.

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Reliability-Centered Maintenance is not a replacement for Preventive Maintenance. PM will always have its place in the overall maintenance structure. The message of RCM is simple that PM cannot silence all failures. It need the help of other task in order to prolong, control, predict or simply allow the failure to occur if the consequences of failure would have minimum consequences . . . . .

Text Box: By Rolly Angeles There are many negative articles on the internet I have read so far regarding RCM in which many users as well as consultants claim that the process of implementation is slow. Some analysis where abandon midway of the process while some claim that they have not achieved the results they desired after having implemented the RCM process. If you search RCM on the net, there are way too many versions of doing RCM which most are considered as streamlined approach or a faster version so that the analysis can be done at a much shorter phase of time. But in this article I would like to talk about version of RCM which is in conformance with SAE JA1011 developed by John Moubray derived from its roots from Nowlan and Heap of the United Airlines industry and applied to land industries by answering the seven basic questions of RCM. Although in my previous article I believe there should be an 8th question in which it states if you are ready for the change process. You may visit these two part series of articles I wrote to refresh or understand what RCM is all about in the first place in case the reader is unfamiliar with the process. Issue No. 27 : July 2009 : Classical RCM - Should There be an Eight Question ? - Part 1 Issue No. 28 : August 2009 : Classical RCM - Should There be an Eight Question ? - Part 2 Therefore, before any plant or industry can implement the RCM process, there are things that you need to know so that the team implementing can derive the most benefit from the RCM process. Let me share you some Tips on Performing the RCM Analysis : Team Should Have Undergone the Training on RCM Do not ever attempt to organize an RCM team without having the team undergo the basic training on RCM. You will likely have a greater chance of failure than success in the end. All members of the team should understand the principles of RCM and why existing assets and equipment should be analyzed using the RCM process. Let me share with you one learning from RCM. Most industries have their existing way of doing maintenance which they referred to as Preventive Maintenance. This is done by scheduling equipment on either a time-based frequency, calendar-based or running hours in order to undergo some replacements, overhauls, inspection, lubrication and other activities on maintenance. But even after performing and complying to PM 100% of the time, there are still a lot of breakdowns, failures and emergencies experience on the equipment. The reason behind this is that Preventive Maintenance cannot silence all breakdowns. In fact complying to every single activity on PM can only guarantee around 20% of the overall failures encountered on the equipment. These will bring you to 80% of equipment breakdowns that cannot be totally address by doing PM alone, hence you need to divert to other maintenance tasks or strategies. In fact by doing too much PM on the equipment, this can induce infant-mortality failures or problems during starting the equipment for operations. Why because in the real world of doing maintenance there are actually 6 patterns of failure and every single part or spare can actually fail in any of the 6 patterns. Preventive Maintenance is only applicable if the pattern of the failure is age-related or there is an actual wear out process occurring on that part. The truth is Preventive Maintenance cannot capture all failures. If we speak about music and consider a band for example. The beauty of the sound delivered by the band is because of the harmony played by each of the instruments performing the same note/chord. If we have 5 members in a band which include a bass player, 1 rhythm/lead guitarist, 1 drummer, 1 organist, 1 drummer and a lead vocal, PM perhaps is the bass player, if you play bass 100% of the time without playing the rest of the instruments, then the audience will be bored to death but if we play them together in pure harmony and rhythm then this is where we will enjoy the beat of the music. Meaning PM is not the only tasks on maintenance. You may also use Predictive Maintenance (the drummer perhaps), Failure Finding Tasks or Functionality Inspection for hidden devices (organist), run to fail/redundancies (rhythm and lead guitarist) and modification (vocalist). But this can only be done by understanding the RCM Logic Tree Diagram. RCM Team Should Compose of the Most Experience People on the Asset Unlike TPM which will be done by everyone in the organization, RCM is not for everyone. One of the most critical process in the RCM analysis starts from the beginning and has something to do about who will compose the RCM team. If we are in the army, the RCM team are the elite commando group, special forces or delta force that had undergone a more advance, thorough and rigid training. As John Moubray points out in his book, RCMII, the team to compose the RCM process should be the people with the most extensive knowledge of the asset. This means that they are the people with an enormous amount of time and experience on the asset that will be analyzed. In layman’s term perhaps these are people with a great amount of white hair or no hair. (I have doubts on the 2nd one since there are young people who are already bald, just kidding!). Sometimes I tell my delegates that if I am the one to select on who will compose the RCM team, then I will be needing a magnifying glass and examine if the candidate have any white or gray hair at all. You simply cannot include a newly hired person or people that had a brief experience on the asset that is about to be analyze. The output of the RCM process will depend on the experience and integrity of the team. What we are doing in the RCM analysis is that we are capturing the experiences of these good people and documenting them because we know for fact that one day these good people will go away and retire. Operator Should Be Included in the RCM Analysis Team There should be at least one incumbent or experience operator on the team. I think one of the mistakes I see in the RCM implementation is that 100% of the members is a cross selection of maintenance people without the presence of any operator. So what happens if there is no operator on the team ? All I can say is that this is a big problem! I think one of the things RCM and TPM agree is the involvement of operators and the belief that maintenance is a shared responsibility for both operators and maintenance. Ones the team reached the second part of the RCM analysis on RCM decision worksheet, some of the task derived by the team will default to operators such as easy inspection, creating visual controls, cleaning etc., in which the best person to perform this would be the operators. Most of the time the traditional approach on maintenance is to create a maintenance task and pass them to operators. And maintenance complain a lot that operators won’t take part on performing the inspections or they are being done half-baked. The reason behind this is that operators do not understand the importance of doing them since maintenance did not taught them about the consequences of the failure it is meant to avoid. Operators learned a lot during the interaction of experience maintenance people on the RCM analysis and the good point is that operators understand the importance and value why a simple inspection should be done in the first place. So if you plan to organize an RCM team, always include 1 or 2 operators with the team. RCM Team Should Refrain From Being Biased On The Analysis Another mistake I see in the RCM Analysis is that after completing the analysis and comparing them to their current Preventive Maintenance activities, almost everything is exactly identical most specially the task that had been derived and agreed upon. Meaning nothing change and the analysis is a complete waste of time. Why does this happen, because the members of the team does not think outside of the box. They prefer to do the same old activities until the remainder of their lives. In the second part of the RCM Analysis which is deriving the RCM Decision Worksheet, or going through to the last couple of questions on RCM, the question to raise is what are we going to do in order to prevent or predict the failur? Or if the failure cannot be prevented nor predicted, then what would be our remaining options on maintenance? I believe that these questions are replaced with easier ones by the team which is what are we doing currently in our maintenance. That is why they revert to the same old tasks again. The members are biased or afraid to change their old routine work. In the final two questions on the RCM analysis, the team should challenge themselves that if the current activities they are doing is acceptable or is there a better way of doing maintenance than the ones they previously have. If there is, then the team should be in agreement and write them on the RCM Decision Worksheet. Remember that in some situations, there may be more than one tasks required to address a certain failure and there might be a combination of tasks needed to address a failure. You can be using both a Predictive Maintenance and Preventive Maintenance at the same time. Basic Equipment Condition Should Be Addressed Prior To the RCM Analysis In my training, sometimes I over emphasize this statement, that I sounded like a soundtrack that repeats itself over and over again. Basic Equipment Condition includes having a clean equipment, complete bolts and having not only the correct amount but correct viscosity of lubricants in it. You can have the most sophisticated, top of the line Predictive Maintenance instruments such as vibration analyzer and thermography, to be carried out by a level 3 certified human being but if your equipment lacks so many nuts, bolts and fasteners in them then these predictive maintenance instrument will be useless and your equipment will be more prone to frequent breakdowns and failures. It only takes one loose or missing bolt to create a chain of destruction on parts inside your equipment. Just one piece of a 20 micron dust is enough to destroy your hydraulic equipment. This is where TPM comes first. I think if your plant is doing a plantwide TPM strategy and you want to implement RCM. Let TPM do their thing first before applying RCM. Nothing much will change if the basic equipment condition is not in place in your equipment and you will just end up being frustrated and again blame it on the RCM process. Initial Interval Is Only An Initial Interval In the second part of the RCM Analysis, an initial interval for every single task will be discussed by the team members. Meaning, they will be asked what they think is the best frequency of performing this maintenance activity on this equipment. If the team agreed a monthly basis, then they will indicate it on the tasks interval. This is what you called the initial interval. This means as the equipment continuous to function well with no problems then the initial interval will be followed. But this is not likely the case for Predictive Maintenance activities, initial interval or the frequency derived will be followed if there are no potential failures or early warning failures spotted on the equipment. If a potential failure is spotted on the equipment, then the monthly frequency will be shortened perhaps to every couple of weeks or weekly. If you are to follow the initial interval to the letter, there is a great chance that you will miss the failure. Therefore, remember that the initial interval as the word itself is only an initial interval and will be subject to change from time to time during the actual implementation of the RCM process on the asset. Know Thy Boundaries RCM is applicable to any industries as long as there are assets or equipments to maintain. This can be applied to mobile and stationary equipment and as far as I can say. Manufacturing industries can also apply RCM for their own benefit. But what is important is to understand the best way to use RCM to your equipment and assets. If you work in an Oil and Gas Plant, power plant or plants in which equipments are connected with each other, then the best way to adopt RCM is to do this on a system level. This means that there will be a list of components that will be included in a system. You need to determine the starting point and where to end your analysis. If you work in a process plant in which equipment are dependent of each other then you can select the bottleneck or constrained equipment as you initial or pilot RCM project. If your equipment is a stand alone and is independent from other equipment, meaning the failure of this equipment will not affect other equipment then you can perform your RCM on that piece of equipment. If your equipment is a complex one perhaps 1 equipment contains around 100 PWB electronic boards such as a wire-bonder from a semicon industry, the best way to perform RCM is to determine the worst sub-assembly of that equipment and this is where you perform your RCM analysis and not on the whole equipment itself. The message, I would like to convey is that RCM should be done only on your most critical system, bottleneck equipment or worst subassembly. We do not recommend the use of RCM on new equipment or good running equipment because the gains and results will not be visible unless otherwise you want to perform RCM on a newly commissioning equipment.

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Text Box: World Class Maintenance Book (Now Available)

• Gallery: New pictures for 2011 added from the gallery portion.

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World Class Maintenance Management - The Twelve Disciplines Book is now available here. This is not only about the technical jargon on reliability and maintenance, it is a book that makes every single maintenance proud that they belong to the maintenance function. If you have been living through the day to day pressures of doing maintenance then this is your story. If you are interested in this book, send me an email. Click Here !

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Our Reliability Newsletter will be provided once a month to our valued subscribers. It provides highlights as well as issues and lessons regarding our most common link which is all about improving the reliability of equipment.

Text Box: Greatest Performer and Humanitarian of all times (1958-2009)

Text Box: This portion is dedicated not only to the greatest performer of all times but also to the greatest humanitarian the world had ever known, Michael Jackson. We bid you goodbye and we shall never forget you. In behalf of my family and my small firm RSA Reliability we salute you. Your music and your message lives on.

Dedication To The Completion

Members of the team should have the passion and dedication on the completion of the RCM Analysis. Ones the team is organized, there will be a series of meeting that will be conducted. Typically every meeting will have a duration for 3 to 4 hrs and the meeting will be ones or twice a week. The leader and the members should agree on a common available time for all the team members to meet. There will be cases that members will be called out of the meeting to address some issues on their operations or for whatever reasons. It will be very discouraging for team if a couple of members are always absent from the meeting or this person

is always being called out of the meeting. If this is an issue you are undergoing, I strongly recommend to disband the team and go back to your old habits. This clearly indicates one thing, your management people are not serious in the RCM implementation and whatever outcome of the analysis, this will be half-baked because you have not capture the experiences of other members because they where not in the meeting in the first place. Or worst having just one member doing the RCM Analysis. This will simply not work because RCM is a team approach and not an individual approach. In one of my class on RCM, a delegate approached me and said that this was one of their early problems on initiating RCM so they requested all members to stay in one hotel until the completion of the analysis, in which their management hesitate in the beginning but agree in the end. Result, they have completed their RCM analysis to the best of their knowledge and everyone was happy with the outcome and results of RCM. I just do not know how much the bill on the hotel was. But I hope the message here is clear, let the team meet with as little interruption as possible and management must provided not only support but commitment as well because support and commitment are 2 different words. Management can support but cannot commit to the RCM analysis.

Well I hope that these tips help you to ponder these messages for a while if you are planning to conduct an RCM analysis in your plant. Remember that RCM is not a replacement for Preventive Maintenance, PM will always have a place and will always be included in the RCM analysis. The point is that we utilize Preventive Maintenance only if it is meant to prevent the failure, and if the failure cannot be prevented then this is where we divert to other tasks. Maintenance is not only confining to Preventive Maintenance alone but understanding that there are other tasks that can be utilized simultaneously with our current Preventive Maintenance tasks.

To conclude this newsletter, RCM is not a perfect reliability improvement initiative, nor are other tools such as lean, 6 sigma, TPM etc. the analysis will depend on the output of the team together with their experience on the asset being analyzed but nevertheless all I can say is that up to this point in time, perhaps this is the best structured approach on the planet on how to derive your maintenance tasks on a piece of equipment.