LIFE CYCLE COSTING | HIGHLY ACCELERATED STRESS TEST PLANNING | STRESS ANALYSIS | DESIGN OF EXPERIMENTS

RELIABILITY-CENTERED MAINTENANCE (RCM)

Is Your Plant Running Safely/Eciently?
Is Your Fleet Fleet Enough?
Are Your Maintenance Costs Too High?
RCM Plan
RCM Process
Outcomes

Time or Cycle-Based actions?

Condition-Based actions?

Maintenance

Performance Optimization

Who? What? When?

Where? Why? How?

Run-to-Failure?
Proactive
Spare Parts and
Materials

What should the inventory

level be?

Where is the best place

to hold inventory?

Do standards need to
be developed?

What is the best feedback loop to

improve the design?

When should root failure

cause analysis be
performed?

THERMAL ANALYSIS | KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT | VENDOR QUALIFICATION

FAULT TREE ANALYSIS | RELIABILITY PREDICTION | FAILURE MODE EFFECTS AND CRITICALITY ANALYSIS | ALLOCATION

ROOT CAUSE FAILURE ANALYSIS | RELIABILITY PROGRAM SUPPORT

What is Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM)?

An analytical method based on Design for Reliability (DFR) and Design for Maintainability (DFM) Best Practices
to match your organizations preventive maintenance capabilities to the design characteristics of your product or
system.
Product/System
Requirements

Design for Reliability (DFR)

Design for Maintainability (DFM)

Failure Mode Information:

PoF
Analysis

HALT/HAST

Surrogate
Data

RCM Decision Analysis

Mode

RCM
Plan/Strategy

Accessibility

Testability

Times-toRepair

Human Factors

FMECA

(Evident & Hidden Failures)

RCM Task

C
Analysis

Field Performance
RCM Task

RCM Task

Failure Rate/Life Data:

Field Data
Analysis

Test Data
Analysis

Surrogate
Data

Weibull &
Trend Analysis

Induced
Failures
Maintenance Work
Orders per Year
Number of Maintenance
Personnel
Total Maintenance Hours

Optimized
Total Ownership Cost
PoF = Physics-of-failure
HALT = Highly Accelerated Life Test
HAST = Highly Accelerated Stress Test
FMECA = Failure Modes, Effects and Criticality Analysis

What Benefits does RCM Provide?

Identifies maintenance actions that will reduce the probability of catastrophic product/system failure
Identifies cost-effective maintenance actions
Promotes an optimal mix of maintenance action types
Applicable to DoD, government, industry and commercial systems, products and processes

RCM Strategies

Run to Failure

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Small items
Non-critical
Inconsequential
Unlikely to fail
Redundant

Preventive
Subject to wearout
Consumable
replacement
Failure pattern
known

Predictive
Random failure patterns
Not subject to wear
Preventive Maintenanceinduced failures

Proactive
Root-cause failure
analysis
Age exploration
Failure modes and
eects analysis
(FMEA)/Failure
modes, eects and
criticality analysis
(FMECA)

What Criteria is Used to Make RCM Decisions?

Failure consequences determine priority (safety- or function-critical)

Selection of each preventive maintenance task is based on inherent failure patterns
Scheduled maintenance is based on functional or safety consequences
Product/system redesign for safety may be required
Maintenance actions should be economically justifiable
Function

1
Is occurrence of a
failure evident to operating
crew in performance of
normal duties?

Evident Failures

Yes

Does the failure

cause a loss of function or
secondary damage that has
a direct and adverse effect
on operating safety?

Yes

Critical
Safety

Class A

Hidden Failures

No

Does failure
have a direct and
adverse effect on
operational
capability?

No

Class D

Yes

No
Scheduled
Scheduled maintenance
maintenance is
Operating
is required and must be
desired if it is
Scheduled
capability
Other
able to reduce risk to an
(economics)
effective in
maintenance is
regular
acceptable level or item
functions
reducing
Class B
desired if it is
must be redesigned
(economics) cost effective in
probability or
unless basic design
Class C
operational
reducing
constraints require
consequences to
corrective
acceptance of the
an acceptable
4
maintenance
6
identi ed risk
5
level
Is there
Is there an
an effective and
Is there an
effective and applicable
applicable preventive
effective and applicable
preventive maintenance
maintenance task or
preventive maintenance
task or combination of
combination of tasks
task or combination of
tasks that will prevent
that will prevent
tasks that will prevent
functional failures?
functional
functional failures?
Safety
Mission
All
Others
failures?
Yes

No

Submit a
safety related
design change

Describe and
classify task(s)

Scheduled
maintenance is
required to
reduce risk of
multiple failures
or unavailability
of function to an
acceptable
level?

Hidden or
infrequent
functions

Yes

No

Describe and
classify task(s)

Yes

No task
required

Describe and
classify task(s)

Is there an
effective and applicable
prevention task or combination
of tasks that will prevent
functional failures?

Yes

No
8

Describe and
classify work

Yes

No

Is a scheduled
failure nding
task available
and justi ed?

Describe and
classify task(s)

No task
required

Submit a safety
related design
change if appropriate

No
No task required
Submit a safety
related design
change if appropriate

Besides Safety Issues, What Other RCM Criteria Would

Drive a Potential Redesign Decision?
Decision criteria include:
How critical is the impact of failure?
Is the failed item expendable or not?
How effective is redesign at solving the problem?
Can Condition Monitoring help, and is it justifiable?
What about design redundancy?
Will a failure have a direct and adverse eect
on critical system or process functionality?
NO

Is the item expendable?

YES

YES

Can redesign solve the problem

permanently and cost-eectively?
NO

NO

Is there a Condition Monitoring (CM) technology (e.g., vibration testing/sensing,

thermography) that will give sucient warning (alert/alarm) of impending failure?
NO

Is design redundancy justied

by cost and priority ?
NO

Accept risk of failure

RUN TO FAILURE

Redesign
PROACTIVE MAINTENANCE

YES

Is there an eective PM task that

will minimize functional failure?
NO

YES

NO

Is CM cost and priority justied?

YES

YES

YES

Install redundant units

PROACTIVE MAINTENANCE

Dene PM Task and Schedule

PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE

Dene CM Task and Schedule

PREDICTIVE MAINTENANCE

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 Define product/system R&M requirements

Perform Design for Reliability RCM-related tasks
PoF Analysis
Define HALT/HAST and interpret results
Collect/analyze failure mode distributions
Collect/analyze surrogste data
Perform FMEA/FMECA and root cause analysis
Analyze and Assess Maintainability Design Attributes
Define and implement an RCM Decision Analysis Plan/Strategy
Significant function selection
RCM task evaluation selection & implementation
Collect, analyze and assess RCM performance data
Field and test failures, down to root cause
Weibull & trend analysis
Field maintenance data
Optimize RCM performance (feedback loop)

RCM-Related Documents
Maintenance Steering
Group (MSG-3)
NAVAIR 0D-25-403. Guidelines for
the Naval Aviation RCM Process
Army Pamphlet 750-40, Guide
to RCM for Fielded Equiptment
MIL-STD-3034, RCM Process
Society of Automotive
Engineers (SAE)

811 Court St. Utica, NY 13502

qinfo@quanterion.com
1.877.808.0097

What Can Quanterion do to Help?

SAE JA 1011, Evaluation

Criteria for RCM
Processes
SAE JA 1012, A Guide to
the RCM Standard

Services
DESIGN PHASE

CONCEPT PHASE

Reliability/Functional
Block Diagrams
Reliability Prediction
Reliability Growth Modeling
FMEA/FMECA
Fault Tree Analysis
Risk and Safety Analysis
Component and
Materials Selection
Stress Analysis and Derating
Vendor Selection
Life Cycle Costing
Warranty and Sparing
Analyses
Design of Experiments
Reliability Centered
Maintenance

Requirements Analysis
Metrics and Goal Setting
System Modeling
Analysis of Alternatives
Allocation
Benchmarking
Reliability Gap Analysis
Reliability Program
Planning

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT AND PROTOTYPING

Reliability Test Plan
Development
Highly Accelerated Life
Test (HALT) Planning
Environmental Testing
Stress Test Planning
Reliability Demonstration
Failure Analysis & Corrective
Action System (FRACAS)
Vendor Reliability
Auditing/Assessment
Product Qualification

PRODUCTION AND
DEPLOYMENT PHASE

Highly Accelerated
Stress Screening
Environmental
Stress Screening
Vendor Qualification
Warranty Analysis
Hazard Rate/Risk Analysis
Logistics (Depot)
Assessment
Field Reliability Assessment
Data Collection/Analysis
Lifetime Extension

Credentials
As examples of our credentials in RMQ (as well as software engineering, cybersecurity, and knowledge management), we
are the day-to-day operator of the DoDs Center of Excellence in these technologies:

Reliability Information Analysis Center

http://theRIAC.org

http://thecsiac.com

Authors of over 80 publications, papers and presentations and software tools in R&M
SMRP-certified engineers for direct RCM support
ASQ CRE-Certified consulting engineers and instructors in Reliability training
Development of joint government/industry R&M Standards and Handbooks
Performed R&M assessments and analyses for numerous DoD, government, industrial and commercial
customers

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We provide professional high-quality services in all aspects of RMQ, offering an independent unbiased perspective. We
are happy to enter into Nondisclosure Agreements and have a variety of easy-to-use contracting arrangements.