Advantages And Disadvantages Of Reliability Centered Maintenance

Advantage of reliability centered maintenance (RCM)

• Can be most efficient maintenance program.

• Lower costs by eliminating unnecessary maintenance or overhauls.

• Reduced probability of sudden equipment failures.

• Able to focus maintenance activities on critical components.

• Increased component reliability.

• Incorporate root cause analysis.

Disadvantage of reliability centered maintenance (RCM)

• Can have significant start-up cost, training, equipment, etc.

• Savings potential not readily seen by management.

Maintenance can be further be classified into two types namely breakdown and planned or unscheduled maintenance and scheduled maintenance or planned maintenance and unplanned maintenance.

Routine/preventative maintenance is usually planned and includes scheduled inspections repairs and replacement to make sure everything continues to work. It can be compared to an annual service on your car. Corrective maintenance is needed when things go wrong or break downs occur demanding reactive action to be taken to get things up and running again. It can be compared to having a repair carried out on your car after a part has failed.

Important of maintenance

Regular maintenance is essential to keep premises, equipment, machines and the work environment safe and reliable. It helps to eliminate workplace hazards. Lack of maintenance or inadequate maintenance can lead to dangerous situations, accidents and health problems. It is important that a planned maintenance programme is in place and that all maintenance work is risk assessed before beginning the task.

Who is affected/ most at risk

Everyone is affected. Those who carry out maintenance work are at risk if the tasks have not been assessed and adequate controls are in place to keep them safe but others would be affected if maintenance work was not carried out as they could be working with or around dangerous equipment or within a dangerous environment. Contractors brought in to carry out maintenance work can be particularly at risk as they may be unfamiliar with the workplace and the procedures in place for working

• Inappropriate design or selection especially of maintainability.

A proper maintenance plan will reduced maintenance causes.

Plant and machinery in the initial days always perform to their fullest capacity but as time goes with regular wear and tear, this becomes increasingly difficult. If proper and regular maintenance is undertaken than production capacity can be maintained at a more or less same level. Maintenance also requires replacement decisions. Replacement is a substitution of existing fixed asset with a new asset, which may enhance features capable of performing similar function. The need for replacement may arise because of normal use, obsolescence, early service failure, destruction, etc.

2.3. Fault tree analysis

The Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) was developed originally in the sixties in the area of the American telecommunication industry and aircraft industry. Only in the beginning of the eighties a formalization of these methods occurred at the instigation of American authorities.

The Fault Tree Analysis is used for reliability and safety security analyses. The proceeding is very similar to the Reliability Block Diagram (RBD). The aim is to determine possible combinations of causes which can lead to certain undesirable events (event), the so-called top level