Maintenance Task Selection

Summarised by : Sandy Dunn

Webmaster, Plant Maintenance Resource Center

From Peter Ball

Ron (who lurks no more),

Welcome to the fray.

Just a couple of basic questions:

1. Are you aware of any other RCM "Packages" that conform to the requirements of SAE JA1011;
2. If so, can you name them?
3. If there are others, then why have you come out so strongly in advocating RCM11, which after all
said and done is only the title of a book.

Please do not mis-understand me, but industry IS confused with this never ending 'tussle over RCM
and it's many variations, most if not all fail in some respect or other. Hence the need for TQM in many
instances.

Peter B.

From Ron Doucet

To Peter, who is definitely not a lurker,

Sorry about the delay in responding to this but it is a busy time of the year

To answer you first question regarding other SAE JA1011 compliant RCS, yes there are others
namely the US Naval Air Command's NAVAIR 00-25-403 "Guidelines for the Naval Aviation reliability
Centered maintenance Process" and the British Royal Navy with its RCM-oriented Naval Engineering
standard NES45, these process have remained true to the process that was named RCM by Nowlan
and Heap in 1978. I know a lot of so called RCM processes out there and I have compared them and
none except those that I mentioned

For those of you who don't know, the evolution of RCM started in the 1960's to address the reliability
of aircraft in an attempt to keep them airborne. The aviation industry started to focus on maintaining
what the aircraft did, not what they were. In other words they were maintaining the functions of the
aircraft. With so much success and enabling planes to be reliable and at minimizing their maintenance
costs, the US Department of Defence commissioned a report to aid them in maintaining their aircrafts.

In 1978, a report was prepared for the US DoD describing the current state of the process that the
airlines were using. the report was written by Stanley Nowlan and Howard Heap of United Airlines. It
was entitled "Reliability-Centered Maintenance", or RCM.

From general consensus and from what I have seen, no other comparable process exists for
identifying the true, safe minimum of what must be done to preserve the functions of assets. This
includes not only maintenance tasks but also operator tasks, training, process changes and physical
redesigns.
To answer you second request, yes

For your third, when it is all said and done, RCM II is not only a title of a book (worth reading by the
way) it is also the name of the RCM process. Unlike all of the other RCM's, whose focus was to take
the sound work of Nowlan and Heap, (if they read it) and try to make is faster, RCM II was the attempt
at industralizing the process such that it could be applicable to any industry not only aviation. One of
the major changes was not in how the process is applied but to actually make it more rigorous such
that environmental consequences could be managed.

In 1978 when the Nowlan and heap report was published, the environment was not the biggest issue
and for aircrafts, the focus was on "maintaining the desired functions of the aircraft, to take off, fly and
land, not on environmental consequences after a crash.

I have come out strongly in favour of RCM II because other so called RCM processes either skip
steps , do not embody the functional approach, or are merely preventive maintenance optimizing
tools. As for the latter, they are focused on improving an already existing maintenance program and
not on determining what the maintenance program should be. True RCM, determines the required
activities to ensure that any physical asset continues to deliver its desired functions in its present
operating context.

The problem with all of the "expedient or quickened versions" that I have seen is that they are not
safe. Keep in mind, some so called RCM process do not even resemble one bit the original RCM. Of
those that do, steps that were taken out in the streamlining effort without knowledge of the
consequence.

I was even at a conference where this vendor of an RCM type process said "With (this type of RCM)
you can identify 85% of critical failures in much less time than classical RCM" (read RCM II).

The question I had to ask was, what are we going to do with the other 15% of critical failures?

Apart from the fact that RCM II is not slower than any so called other RCM process, can we stand up
in court after someone has died and justify the ignoring of critical failures for expediency of a process.

Here is something to think about as you are choosing how you will determine you future maintenance
programs. As there are a lot of Australians on this site, this should be close to you hearts:

After the Longford disaster in September in the State of Victoria, the State parliament on November
13th 1998 added a new section to the State of Victoria evidence Act of 1958 which reads as follows:

"19D. Legal professional privilege

(1) Despite anything to the contrary in this division, if a person is required by a commission to answer
a question or produce a document or thing, the person is not excused from complying with the
requirement on the ground that the answer to the question would disclose, or the document contains,
or the thing discloses, matter in respect of which the person could claim legal professional privilege.

(2) The commissioner may require the person to comply with the requirement at hearing of the
commission from which the public, or specified persons, are excluded in accordance with section 19B

In other words, when all is said and done, this amendment suspended attorney/client confidentiality
for the purpose of Longford and future official inquiries.

I will leave the decision up to you, as for me, I have chose a sound, audible and defensible process. I
would hate to be in front of an inquiry telling people that I tried to save a few buck on a process which
documented that it followed the 80/20 rule.

Anyway that's all for now.

I hope I have addressed you questions and comments

Ron

From Steve Turner

Hi Ron,

I would like to make some responses to your email (attached) which made some comment on PM
Optimisation. PM Optimisation is a relatively new tool but has been found to be better than RCM for
many operations. Through this email, I would like to explain why and clear up some of the
miosunderstandings that I think you may have picked up around the tracks. I hope that the group may
be interested in me providing some information on PMO.

This email is going to be fairly long but I hope interesting... so if your going to have a read, give
yourself five minutes.

If you want to go to a website about PMO, visit www.pmoptimisation.com.au There are two detailed
explanation papers which you can down load. One is about applying PMO in a mature organisation
and the other is about using PMO in the design phase of a project.

My source of information

The information that I am using is based on 12 years of consulting in the area of RCM and other
maintenance improvement tools.

For four years in the early 90s I was a Licensed RCM II trainer and facilitator. For the past four years,
I been working along side Strategic Industry Research Foundation (now known as SIRF Roundtables
Ltd (www.sirfrt.com.au)) and 8 major multinationals from a variety of capital intensive industries. My
work has resulted in a well proven tool to improve asset management. The work commenced with
evaluating the approach taken by the North American Nuclear Power Industry.

What is PM Optimisation?

PM Optimisation is a method of maintenance analysis specifically designed for existing plants. It has
also been used to assist in the design phase of new plants where there is experience in dealing with
ones that are similar.

The methodology that we have developed is called PMO2000. PMO 2000 has nine steps as follows:

Step 1 Task Compilation

Step 2 Failure Mode Analysis
Step 3 Rationalisation and FMA Review
Step 4 Functional Analysis (Optional)
Step 5 Consequence Evaluation
Step 6 Maintenance Policy Determination
Step 7 Grouping and Review
Step 8 Approval and Implementation
Step 9 Living Program

Download a paper from the website for more details of these steps.

Basic Premise
In general terms PM Optimisation starts from the premise that mature organisations must be doing
reasonably well to be still in business so the current PM program can't be that bad.

Having said this, we commonly find that most of the industry problems emerge because of insufficient
resources to complete the program as well as the corrective maintenance requirements. We therefore
have a strong focus on human as well as asset productivity and have designed a method which
retains the necessary levels of coverage and detail, but is done in a vastly improved time frame.

The next premise is that in mature plant, most of the likely failures have been experienced or have
been managed effectively by the current preventive maintenance program. Those potential failures
that have not occurred may not be economically preventable anyway (depending on cost of down
time) as the cost of failure averaged over the life would be low compared to the cost of prevention.

The process

Essentially what is done by using PM Optimisation is to gather in one list all of the formal and informal
maintenance tasks done by all those involved in operating and maintaining the equipment. (It is
worthwhile noting that we find on average 50% of the PM completed is done on an informal basis
through the initiative of tradesmen or operators.)

The next step is to define the failure modes that each task is meant to prevent or detect.

We then sort and filter all the failure modes and add to the list, those which have happened in the past
and are not receiving any PM and also add to the list any failure modes that are considered likely to
happen. We often do a bit of a Hazop at this point using PID or other technical references including
any manuals.

Once failure modes are listed, the functions lost by each failure can be listed. This step is optional and
rarely done in practice. To most uninitiated people this is heresy however, we believe that a functional
analysis is, in most cases, not good value for money. The example I would like to use is that of a
family car or a mobile phone. I would like you to ask yourself what value you would get by spending a
day fathoming all the functions of either before working on the maintenance analysis. Having said
that, there have been times when the group needs understand the functionality to come to a
satisfactory outcome and this is why we say this step is optional.

Once failure modes have been established then, consequence analysis and task determination
proceeds in line with recognised RCM decision logic and the rest is no different to RCM.

In summary, if I were to explain in one paragraph the differences between traditional RCM and PMO it
would be this:

PMO and RCM methods are both methods of maintenance analysis aimed at defining the complete
maintenance requirements of assets however, the central difference is the way that the body of likely
failure modes is generated. RCM starts from a zero base and arrives at a list of failure modes by
defining functions and functional failures whereas PMO generates a list of likely failure modes through
an analysis of the current PM program and adding to that, the list of failures that have already
happened and those which, on examination of the design are considered likely to happen.

This process is on average six times faster than Classical RCM (I can provide the reference paper if
anyone is interested). In addition this we believe that PMO2000 obtains a maintenance coverage very
close (98%) of that which you would obtain using classical RCM methods.

Comments on Ron's propositions.

Proposition 1
"I have come out strongly in favour of RCM II because other so called RCM processes either skip
steps , do not embody the functional approach, or are merely preventive maintenance optimizing
tools. As for the latter, they are focused on improving an already existing maintenance program and
not on determining what the maintenance program should be"

Response

We believe that the whole point of PMO is to determine what the maintenance program should be.
Perhaps you mean something else that I have missed.

Proposition 2

"The problem with all of the "expedient or quickened versions" that I have seen is that they are not
safe."

Response

You may like to expand on this Ron as there are no reasons provided. However I would like to make
the following points:

First, the PM Optimisation program used in the Kewaunee Nuclear Power Station (USA) for many
years has been assessed by the equivalent or our Regulator General as a major strength. This came
after the company abandoned the use of RCM.

The second point is this. Lets say you have 30 hazards in your plant, one of them is receiving no PM,
three are receiving the wrong PM and the others are being maintained properly. Can you wait five
years to find out the problems or do you want to find out straight away. If you use PMO2000 you will
have these under control in one year, if you use traditional RCM it will take you six.

Further to this, in my ten or so years of facilitating RCM analysis, I have put about 1 in every 200
failures in the hazard category. Of these, only once have I ever felt the RCM team had uncovered a
potential hazard that was not receiving any PM.

My rough calculations tell me that the benefit of RCM over PMO2000 is the one new hazard found in
15,000 failure modes. 15,000 failure modes would consume 15,000 manhours with four people at a
workshop running at a rate of 15 minutes per failure mode. Based on a 6 to 1 rate of analysis
(PMO/RCM), identification of the hazard has cost 12,500 extra manhours. I would suggest that you
find other ways to use that labour to make a contribution to site safety.

The third point is that the greatest safety issue surrounding maintenance is not the lack of a good PM
Program but a lack of resources to do it and the big worry is the lack of resources to do the corrective
action. You mentioned the Esso disaster. I would like to add to your comment that in this disaster a
significant contributing factor was a lack of corrective maintenance not a poor preventive maintenance
strategy. I read in the inquiry findings that it was known that there were many items in the plant that
were not serviceable and the unserviceability of some of these items contributed to the scale of the
disaster. This to me is an indication that Esso were carrying far too many failures.

The problem we often find with industrial companies is that when maintenance people finally get the
plant, the corrective work consumes the time allocated and many times the PM is missed. We call this
the vicious cycle of reactive maintenance. In short, high backlog of corrective work and high levels of
unplanned failures leads to missing PM - Failed equipment almost always has a higher priority than
PM. Missing PM increases the rate of unexpected failure and so the cycle gets worse. We have
evidence of this through data collected from some of our clients.

A safety conscious maintenance engineer needs to get out of this vicious cycle, get on top of the
backlog and get back into PM. To do this he needs to create productivity in his people (eliminate over
servicing, task duplication and ensure that all tasks are done at the correct frequency) and find a tool
that will get him that productivity and control quickly. If this is the road to a safer environment then
PMO2000 will give you a much better safety profile than RCM will.

Proposition 3

"I was even at a conference where this vendor of an RCM type process said "With ( this type of RCM)
you can identify 85% of critical failures in much less time than classical RCM" (read RCM II)..............
The question I had to ask was, what are we going to do with the other 15% of critical failures?"

There is quite a likelihood that the presenter was me and if this was the case, I have obviously failed
to get the point across correctly. What I intend to say at conferences is this:

When doing a zero based RCM according to the principles of Nolan and Heap, one is attempting to
find all the failure modes that are reasonably likely to occur. This results in somewhere around 20 PM
tasks for every one hundred failure modes (if you do RCM without skipping any steps). Thus 80% of
the analysis time has resulted in "No Scheduled Maintenance". This provides little value if the
objective of the analysis is to generate an effective PM Program. With PMO2000 we get less than
10% of analysis resulting in "No Scheduled Maintenance" hence the analysis time is more productive
and the coverage six times greater for the same analysis time. The big point is that we get the same
maintenance program out the other end, not 85% or 80% of it.

Finale

Finally, I personally regard RCM according to the paper written by Nolan and Heap as the greatest
contribution to reliability engineering throughout history. I have a copy on my bookshelf.

The point that escapes most people however, is that RCM was originally developed as a design tool
rather than as a tool for mature organisations with a mature maintenance schedules.

Therein lies one of the greatest contradictions to RCM being used in mature plants - the intended
function of RCM was for use as a design tool yet people have for a long time, been trying to use it as
a tool for improving maintenance in mature organisations.

For all those RCM Gurus out their, at Step 1 of RCM, functional analysis, we find need to redesign the
process of RCM because it is being used in a manner that was not intended and is not capable of
achieving a satisfactory level of performance because it takes too long.

If you have gotten this far, grab a Fosters from the fridge and have a beer on me for Christmas :-)

Regards

Steve Turner

PS Don't forget to download the papers from the web at www.pmoptimisation.com.au

From Tony Ramshaw

Steve,

A very interesting note and very much in line with my experience. It also fits in with a previous note of
mine on the forum that you need to split out the real integrity items and treat them differently.

I used to work for Shell from the Hague who developed a simplified RCM process S-RCM many years
ago. It works on many of the principles you describe and has been well proven over the years. It also
consumes around 20% of the effort of RCMII and as a result gets used and implemented, so the
benefits are quickly delivered. Again as you describe it involves the technicians so you get real
practical input plus they learn the economic value of maintenance. It also has a strong focus on the
business benefit of doing preventative maintenance, if there isn't any don't bother.

Tony Ramshaw
Head of Maintenance - Kvaerner Australia

From Stephen Young

Interesting comment Tony.

I guess it comes down to identifing all of the failures that could ruin your business or kill peolpe - or do
you just a skim across the top to find some of the failures.

My information is that some within Shell are now thinking the S-RCM approach was not such a
wonderful idea after all and in fact, has left them more exposed to risk and litigation.

I understand the issue of trying to find a quick solution in a world demanding immediate results, but
that is a project management and analysis priority issue, not an analysis process issue.

Stephen

From Tony Ramshaw

Stephen,

Thanks for the comment, agree with he general sentiment. If people in Shell are really saying that S-
RCM is not such a good idea that is news to me. I don't believe you are exposed to risk if you look at
integrity items separately and that is what Shell do using RBI and IPF.

The whole process is of course the intelligent application of business risk management. If you don't
have the tools or experience to do this then you need to apply something like RCMII and FMECA
rigorously. Even that does not fully solve the issue because unless you pick your teams carefully with
the right experience you can still miss things. A very experienced facilitator is required and many of
the RCM facilitators only know how to apply the method but do not have the experience to know if the
answer makes sense.

Tony

From Peter Ball

Hi there Steve,(and Sandy 2)

You seem to be on the right track with your PM Optimisation.

Interesting that you also have described "Conventional" RCM, but it has integrated with Classical"
RCM in terms of Long time and High cost. Several RCM Vendors would dispute this, especially those
claiming that Streamlined is better than Classical.
I am very curious to know the root origin of the seven basic questions which appear to define the only
RCM approach, and have copied them direct from SAE JA1011.

QUOTE

4.1 RCM-Reliability-Centered Maintenance

5. Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM)-Any RCM process shall ensure that all of the following
seven questions are answered satisfactorily and are answered in the sequence shown as follows:
a. What are the functions and associated desired standards of performance of the asset in its present
operating context (functions)?
b. In what ways can it fail to fulfil its functions (functional failures)?
c. What causes each functional failure (failure modes)?
d. What happens when each failure occurs (failure effects)?
e. In what way does each failure matter (failure consequences)?
f. What should be done to predict or prevent each failure (proactive tasks and task intervals)?
g. What should be done if a suitable proactive task cannot be found (default actions)?

To answer each of the previous questions "satisfactorily," the following information shall be gathered,
and the following decisions shall be made. All information and decisions shall be documented in a
way which makes the information and the decisions fully available to and acceptable to the owner or
user of the asset.

UNQUOTE

I have spent many hours searching RCM documentation but without real success. These include
amongst numerous others: MSG-3, Mil-Std-2173 (Mil-Hdbk-2173) both cancelled in favour of Navair
00-25 403 (current). These questions would appear to be the origin of RCM (Classical?) but who is to
rule that there are other approaches, and decision diagrams, which can also be considered valid. Yes
I have a copy of RCM11 and Yes ... the questions are there , virtually identical to those in SAE
JA1011.

I am not suggesting that an RCM approach can be based only on Pareto Analysis, as alluded by Ron.

On your marks, ready..Set...GO!

Peter B.

From Kim Matulich

Folks,

With all this talk of litigation it's amazing we don't have the company legal eagles doing reviews of
their equipment strategies.

Stephen, in an economic downturn how do you convince an organisation to implement a thorough

RCM process in comparison to say a TDBU approach to strategy development? I'm genuinely
interested as a lot of maintenance decision makers I have met look mainly at the tangible returns
(minimum cost, minimum project duration) rather than the projected expected returns of carrying out
RCM.

Regards,

Kim Matulich
From Ron Doucet

Steve, thanks for the rather long reply to my comments on RCM and RCM processes. I will address
all of your concerns to what I wrote, and, back up some of my points for clarification. Given everything
you wrote it will take a little time.

From reading some of Steves information on his site, his PMO process, which he does not call RCM,
has more RCM in it that most streamlined processes that call themselves RCM. Steve though, called
it what it is, a PM optimization process, not RCM.

Later,

Ron

From Jose Duran

RCM II is only another approach to RCM. for me RCM is RCM , the main differences between
versions is how you apply it. I particularly think that RCM across all the assets is too expensive. We
believe in the RCM risk driven (criticality, cost/risk optimization, etc.), where it is only worthwhile for
high risk systems. There are several companies that have faced those costs yet and now they are
performing a streamlined version of RCM

Jose

From Ron Doucet

Jose, actually RCM is a defined process with discrete application steps. It is not an approach. If you
change how you apply it, ie take out some steps, apply it differrently, then by default it is not RCM any
more.

Not to get hung up on this but RCM is a process that was defined by Nowlan and Heap in 1978. If you
change that process, good or bad, (not to get in a debate right now), then it is no longer the same
process and therefore no longer RCM.

It is amazing how alot of people critisize "clasical" RCM to varying degrees yet they all want those 3
letters in their process names. If someone has a better or different process then call it a different
name and let it ride on its own merrit.

If you take the vodka out of a screwdriver (mixed drink involving vodka and orange juice), its not a
screwdriver anymore..........its orange juice.

More details on that later

Ron

From Stephen Young

Kim
If the changes to Victorian (Aust) legislation (aftermath of Longford) go through parliament then we
will have the legal departments taking a very active interest in how we maintain our assets.

On your second point, there is the myth that RCM is expensive when compared to the modified RCM
approaches. It is just that - a myth and we often see rigorous RCM analyses achieving ROI's
measured in weeks and in some cases, days. The key is commitment, proper training, good project
management and sensible selection and prioritising of the assets analysed.

We consider it is better to spend your effort doing selected analysis that you can defend, and gaining
all the benefits of that rigorous analysis, than putting your effort into an analysis which you know is not
catching all failure modes that could bite you and which is not maximising the benefits. (A bit like
repairing an item of kit - you can do a 'dash across the top band-aid' repair which gets you out of
immediate trouble or, a more thorough job which restores the item to it's original capability. Often the
time difference between the two approaches is minimal - but the benefits huge.)

It is at the end of the day, a judgement call, but we believe it is better to do the job well rather than
spend a similar amount of time to achieve less benefit. There will be times when a very quick analysis
may be expedient but to us, it is better to do a higher level analysis to identify where you are at risk
rather than change the analysis process.

Selling the idea to your board should be on the same basis as selling a capital expansion or upgrade
of plant to the board. You describe the need, the business case, the risks, the benefits to the
company (and particularly the board), the project plan, the outputs and how you will measure your
success. It works for our clients.

Kind regards

Stephen Young

From Trevor Hislop

Stephen

When setting up a quality PM system in an established plant, it is usual practise to use a small area of
the plant as the trial-horse. In this way, it is very easy for all to see the results and it makes it so much
easier to then "sell the idea" to senior management, bean counters et all.

Can you do this with RCM,????

Trevor Hislop

From Ron Doucet

Yes you can. That is the approach we chose here at the Iron Ore Company of Canada.

AS you all know by know we went with RCM II for reasons that i have already mentionned and will
mention further in by future responce to Steve.

To make it short.

Chose a pilot (actually chose too many as beginners in 1996 but that's another story)
That pilot was an automated rock crusher.

It was producing at 50 to 60% capacity. We need approx. 750,000 tonnes of crushed rock per year to
maintain our haulage roads. It was delivering between 400 and 500 thousand at $6.00 per tonne!

Did an RCM analysis as a pilot. Pilots take 2 to 4 times longer than normal due to the newness of the
facilitators and training (that's OK as long as you know it up front)

Total cost of the pilot was approximately $80,000 to perform the analysis.

Analysis stayed on the shelf for a while.

We are still producing at $6.00 per tonne

Someone suggested that we close the crusher and buy the stuff at $3.00 per tonne.

I suggested that they listen to their people who gave a lot of effort in using RCM as a process to
determine the maintenance and operating requirements for this crusher.

They listened.

We implemented one suggested redesign, the operating procedures and the maintenance tasks.

For 18 months prior to implementation we were producing at $6.00 per tonne.

One month after implementation, yes one month, we were producing at $2.00 a tonne which at the
time I was tracking it, was sustained for 16 months( and like the energiser bunny, its still going and
going and going...)

End result: $3.0 Million dollar savings on unit cost per year, year after year.

An unexpected $750,000/year savings on direct maintenance costs.

So for a total of a one time $80,000 investment (today it would cost only $20K to $30K because we
are much faster) we have been saving $3.75 million dollars per year since 1998.

So we want to reduce the cost of doing the RCM to get a bigger return? Is this not enough?

Another quickie, again using real RCM.

Now we are more experienced so things are going the way they should. RCM analysis on a
dewatering filter of which we have 26.

Total analysis, using that long RCM II process took 13 half days with 6 people.

Total investment in doing the RCM analysis $13,100.00 (yes only 13 thousand dollars)

Total benefits based on changing one mtce task from fixed interval to on-condition:
$310,066/year/filter

Total benefits (unit costs) for 26 filters was $8 Million/year

No benefits on direct maintenance costs as these are all small motors etc.

Benefits were realised by decreased unplanned operational consequences.

13 half days = $13,000 cost = $8.0 million per year benefit

What are we trying to speed up again? How fast do we want to go?

And to answer your question,

the company listened

One more note.

As you can see from above, the lion's share of benefits were unit cost decreases through increased
the capacity of the assets. This was achieved by first determining what we wanted the equipment to
do and then by detailing the most appropriate failure management policy that would decrease or
eliminate the operational consequence. Processes that focus mainly on reducing direct maintenance
costs will miss the big picture and the bulk of the benefits by orders of magnitude of 1000s. RCM II of
course focuses on delivering the maintenance tasks, operating procedures, identifying the required
training and detailing the required redesigns that will enable your asset to perform at its desired level
and do what it is supposed to do.

I meant this response to be shorter but I guess its tool late now

Ron

From Kim Matulich

Stephen,

Which Victorian (Aust) laws are you referring to? What recommendations from the Longford enquiry
are the catalyst for these changes?

I have a copy of the enquiry and would be keen to highlight your references for future justification.

Regards,

Kim Matulich

From Jim Turner

Ron, dollars are good but you gave no indication of how it was done !! Lets get the before and after,
where did you find savings? Bar talk is always good but lets get to the bottom line, e-speak is time is
money etc.

Jim

From Ron Doucet

Jim,

The savings:
For the automated rock crusher: The after and before:

750,000 tonnes per year produced at $2.00 per tonne instead of $6.00 per tonne = yearly savings of
$3.0 million

Mtce savings came from one of the suggested redesign basically to go from hydraulic drive to electric
and improved reliability. (decreased rate of failures due to maintenance and operational procedures.)
those were $750,000 per year off the bottom line.

For an item to be maintainable it first has to be able to deliver its required function. In our case the
hydraulic drive couldn't. This is one of the reason that a maintenance policy should be based on
functions. this ensures that you maintain what the equipment does and not what the equipment is.

For the filter, the savings resulted mainly from going to on condition filter cloth changes. By doing that:

the clothes were only changed when they had to

it also allowed for planning and scheduling of the changes at times when the operational
consequences were decreased
And it decreased the consequences of filter clothes being operated when they were inefficient which
not only decreased throughput but also cost us extra in additives to maintain quality.

The $8.0 million dollars savings is all in the extra capacity enable through a different failure
management policy for the cloths.

Even though we determined on condition maintenance tasks for the motors etc. which we previously
ran to failure, You still have to replace the motor so there were no big savings there except for a bit of
overtime.

We make our money by passing 12 million tonnes of slurry through the filter so that we can make our
end product, iron ore pellets. The cost of the operational consequence is 10,000 times the cost of the
failed components. Your bang for the buck is to focus on doing the right things, using the right
process and enabling your asset to deliver its intended function. The biggest cost benefits are in
decreasing unit costs. That is how most of us make a profit out there.

I hope this answers your question.

In terms of how the analysis was done, it followed the RCM II process from start to finish and then
through implementation of the findings, as I said before, one redesign, the mtce tasks and the
operating procedures.

Now I hope I have answered your question.

Ron

From Sandy Courtalin

Ron,

I think you should have closed the crusher and buy stuff @ $3.00 per tone. A quick calculation shows
that it is more economical to subcontract than to carry on running your crusher. In addition you save
all your maintenance costs linked to the crusher and you can obliged your supplier to reduce its
selling cost each year within a partnership contract.

About the suggested redesign, what was the cost to up-grade the crusher?
Personal thought about RCM....:

Sometimes we think that improvement are due to the using of a method like RCM. But at the end the
problems pointed out and the solutions found were generally well known by maintenance operators or
more generally by the whole operators. Maybe they just didn't have the possibility to report about it
through a suggestion scheme for example. So in my opinion, before rushing in "revolutionary and
magic methods", the maintenance manager should ask himself: Am I well using the resources
currently available?

Sandy

From: Trevor Hislop

Great reply Ron

Thanks for down-to-earth practical information. It's real world stuff !!!! Not dreaming in an ivory tower
!!!

I am sure most forum members would like to hear of more practical examples with "real" figures from
RCMMMMMMM !

Trevor Hislop

From Mick Drew

I think what Ron has done is outlined his recommendations from the RCM in the language of the
business- this is essential no matter what method is used. If maintenance recommendations are
aligned to achieving the business goal - in this case dollars per tonne thruput - then the
recommendations have greatest chance of being supported by management.

In many cases however recommendations for changes to maintenance plans, redesigns, ideas from
suggestion schemes etc are not connected in a logical way to the impact of failure and so the
business impact. My experience in industry with maintenance improvement methods - RCM, TDBU,
FMEA, has been that there is a scepticism from senior management about the investment of time and
resources in methods which still come down to an individuals "judgement". Unlike RONS experience,
some management would prefer to leave the RCM documentation on the shelf and simply take the
lowest cost option. It normally then takes a charismatic champion to do battle to support the process.

Now, I have been using the RCM method coupled with computer simulation. This means the
improvement tasks chosen can be simulated over a lifecycle, and the benefit to the business
estimated in Cost of failure, failure frequency, unavailability, safety, environment and operational
impact. This allows alternative scenarios to be compared- do nothing, versus "Optimum" versus
"Optimum minus 20% cut in budget". The difference in expected results can be evaluated in hours.
Management can treat the RCM program as any other business improvement process. Typically, the
alternative sceanrios are presented to compare the cost of implementation, the cost of failures, and
the risk of safety, environment and operational incidents.

This process overcomes the problems encoutered when "expert opinions" are challenged, when
management are after business impacts and the get "promises" of best practice or believe in RCM its
good for you after all it worked on planes.

The output of computer simulation is also useful for resource planning as it forecast manning and
spares requirements for each scenario. Because today's knowledge is captured in quantifiable
parameters it is possible to update from future equipment history so the analysis outlives the
individual.

From Ron Doucet

Like I said, it was the manager who thought he could buy it for $3.00 a tonne.

Where we are that is highly unlikely.

Secondly if we were doing everything right we would be producing for close to $1.00 a tonne so I think
were are going to keep operating the crusher. Even at $2.00 a tonne I'll take the $750,000 savings
over that of a contractor.

By the way, the modification costs of the redesign were including in the total unit cost and the drop
from $6.00 / tonne to $2.00/tonne still happened in one month and was sustained. It even amazed
me.

With respect to your comments about "revolutionary and magic methods" All we did was apply a
process, determine the maintenance requirement and implement (no magic). RCM is not
revolutionary (been around for almost 40 years) nor magical. It is organised logic with sound
foundations. The people who applied the process were the operators and the tradesmen themselves.

With respect to the people on the floor already knowing what to do and what is wrong, I agree that
you can brainstorm and get a lot of improvement ideas. On the other hand if people have old
fashioned views and ideas about the maintenance function, i.e. maintenance fixes things, then you
could actually get yourself in trouble. You also can not show a process nor audit trail when it comes to
showing due diligence. As you know showing due diligence and process is becoming ever more
important as society's tolerance for industrial disasters lessen.

With no process somebody says, put a bigger "something" as a solution and you end up causing
bigger problems elsewhere. These problems could have safety implications.

Anoth risk is when people come up with a solution of installing protection (outcome of HAZAOPs) yet
the maintennce of that protection is ignored. You'll have fun justifying that tactic if an accident occurs
due to protection not working and the maintenance was not addressed.

Many times the maintenance people only show up when something is broken so they do not know
what an impending failure sounds or feel like.

Part of the process in and RCM II analysis is the change the way people think about maintenance and
then it allows that changes thinking process to be used to develop the right approach for maintaining
that asset.

People who have seen the inner workings of an RCM II session will agree with me that one of the
most spoken phrases during an analysis, which is done in groups, not alone, is "hey, I didn't know
that" from the operator, "hey, I didn't know that" from the maintainer and "hey, I didn't know that" from
the supervisor etc. And Holy @#%$!, I didn't know that could happen!

I could go on about the benefits of groups using a well founded process and about the risks of doing
otherwise. I will talk about that later, now I have to go home for supper.

Oh ya, one more thing. Most maintenance people out there believe that if we put the effort up front in
planing and scheduling that the overall effectiveness will be increased. Our choices are unplanned
maintennce vs planned maintenance. We chose planned.
The same applies to the gathering information. We can do it in a planned or unplanned fashion.
Unplanned is an adhoc brainstorming or problem solving session which generates a lot of ideas.

The Planned approach is first educating people on the process and then using that process to get the
right ideas out. The up front investment in using a process will make the overall exercise actually
shorter, much like what planning does to a job, and it will ensure that the right ideas come out, much
like doing the right job right.

Here is a story

In actual fact, I had told some people a couple years ago that they should use the RCM II process to
address a potential safety hazard which had resulted in actual work refusals.

Two years later after many, many,many periodic meetings, problem solving sessions, consultant
reports, involving lots of people, the problem was not solved.

Than I got a phone call, they told me to go ahead and try to solve it using RCM. 7 meetings later, 6
people per meeting, a good facilitator and the problem and corrective actions were determined. The
people on the floor could not solve it before. Now the people on the floor solved it using the process.

I hope I addressed some of your points.

So again a lot of people on the floor have good ideas, but it does not hurt to actually get those ideas
out, and more, by using a systematic approach. The RCM process will actually allow you to use your
resources well so that you can answer yes to "Am I well using the resources currently available?

Now I'm going home.

Talk to you all tomorrow

Ron

From Sandy Dunn

Kim,

I am not Stephen, but as I understand it, the new Victorian legislation which has been introduced has
developed a new regulatory framework for workplaces which potentially represent "major hazards". At
present, this consists of around only 50-60 workplaces in the State of Victoria, most of which are in
the petrochemical or chemical industries.

The legislation requires these companies to develop a set of policies and guidelines (which have to
have certain features) for identifying potential major incidents and minimising the risk of occurrence.
These guidelines must be reviewed, and approved, by the appropriate regulatory authority. I would
imagine that there will be significant penalties for those organisations that either do not comply by
submitting appropriate guidelines, or who fail to follow their approved policies and guidelines.

This largely came about because of a realisation that the existing Occupational Health and Safety
legislation, while appropriate for managing "minor" events, such as injuries and even fatalities, was
not appropriate for managing major catastrophic events. The Longford enquiry established that the
Longford explosion occurred despite the fact that Esso had in place a health and safety system that
was considered to be one of the best in the world. Anecdotal evidence suggested, however, that the
focus on site was on relatively minor safety issues (for example, employees were regularly
encouraged to replace safety glasses that had scratched lenses), while at the same time, gas leaks
(however minor) were generally treated by employees as relatively routine events.
Incidentally, Esso had intended (and planned) to conduct a Hazop on the plant that exploded for
several (I think 3) years prior to the explosion, but this analysis had been regularly deferred, and had
still not been conducted at the time of the explosion. The Longford Royal Commission concluded that,
had this Hazop analysis been conducted, it is highly likely that this would have identified the potential
risk, and that appropriate actions would have been taken to minimise this risk. Given this judgement, it
is highly likely (in my judgement) that the regulatory authority would approve any structured Hazard
identification and review process (including Hazop, RCM, RBI and others) proposed by these few
organisations that are subject to the new legislation.

As an aside, let me add to Steve Turner's comments by saying that I, too, was an RCM II consultant
and facilitator for almost seven years, and during that time assisted many of Australia's largest
organisations to implement the RCM II process. During that time, my experience was that, for every
ten organisations that started to implement RCM II, only one ever implemented the process on
anything other than a "pilot project" scale. This failure is not because of any failing on the part of the
organisations that tried RCM, nor, I hasten to add, was it due to any failure on the part of the
consultant involved! I have recently come to the conclusion that, in contrast to the position that is put
forward by John Moubray, Ron Doucet and others from the RCM II religion, the major problem is that
RCM II (and by definition RCM) has NOT been adapted sufficiently to meet the needs of industry
outside the airline industry.

Its major failure is in the way that it treats risk at a macro level. The reality is that, in the Airline
industry, the consequences of major failures of significant components on aircraft are the same - 10's
to 100's of people die, and the photographs are on the front pages of most major newspapers. In
different industries, however, the consequences of major failures of significant equipment items vary
significantly - in the petrochemical, oil and gas industries, there is a chance that perhaps 10's of
people die. In the chemical industry, perhaps 100's or 1000's of people die. But in a semiconductor
manufacturing plant, the major consequences are economic, and, in comparison, relatively minor.
Furthermore, even within those industries, the failure of different equipment items have totally
different levels of risk associated with them - in the petrochemical plant, for example, failure of a
furnace could be catastrophic, but failure of the rainwater sump pump far less so. Because of these
differing consequences, at a macro level, the amount of time and effort that should be devoted to
identifying risks and possible failures should be appropriately different. However, the RCM process
treats all such systems the same way - the same amount of rigour is required. I have heard it said
(even by John Moubray himself) that one cannot justify applying RCM to all equipment items - some
equipment items have such low impact on business risk that the effort required to perform RCM
analysis on them is greater than the potential benefits. My question, then, is this - if we are not to use
RCM to develop PM programs for these equipment items, what process should we use?

In my opinion, the PM Optimisation process outlined by Steve Turner, IS RCM adapted to suit the real
needs of all industries. It can be as rigorous as is required to identify all potential failures, hazards and
risks (a la RCM), but it equally can be quickly applied to give 90% of the benefits of RCM at a fraction
of the cost, where the time and effort to perform a rigorous RCM analysis cannot be justified. It uses
the RCM concepts (such as PF Interval, the Decision Diagram, etc.), but does not strictly follow the
RCM process as outlined in JA 1011. If you want to get semantic as a result, and say that it is not,
strictly speaking RCM - then that is fine. In that case, I believe that we have a lot to thank the team
that developed JA 1011 for. First, it clearly identifies those processes that claim to be RCM-based, but
clearly are not. Secondly, it now allows us to see what RCM really is - a rigid, overly rigorous (in most
cases) process that may be applicable to airlines and some other high risk equipment items in
selected high risk industries, but is complete overkill in most situations, in most industries.

For the record, I now assist organisations to implement the PM Optimisation process, with great
results.

From Stephen Young

Sandy
Thank you for replying on my behalf, but the legislation you mentioned is not what I had in mind when
I penned my comment in my email of last week.

The state governments of Victoria and Queensland are both considering legislation to deal with
"Industrial Manslaughter (Vic)" and "Corporate Culpability (Qld)" as both governments are concerned
their current legislation does not adequately deal with industrial incidents causing death or serious
injury. Victoria is leading the way after the Longford incident.

Importantly the concept of aggregation of negligence is introduced which allows the aggregation of
actions and omissions of a group of employees and managers to establish that an organisation is
negligent.

Both governments have made it clear that if managers and/or a management system fails to prevent
workplace death or serious injury, then the responsible manager and/or management team is likely to
face criminal prosecution.

Should the legislation proceed, penalties of over $500,000 and 7 years imprisonment are proposed.

Stephen Young

From Jose Duran

Hello

Now I see more people agree with me. I am working with RCM since about 6 years. I think it is not
worthwhile to be applied in all the assets. it would take a lot of time and efforts, and the return on low
criticality systems is so low. Despite that if you decide to apply it over all the assets, you should at
least make a very good criticality study to do first the first. I mean than ,many RCM efforts have failed
because the pilot studies were done in low criticality systems, of course low ROI after it. In process
industry the assets could be a lot. A big mining company could have invested US$10.000 million in
equipment (or more!). Ok, who dare performs FMEA in all of them!

We have developed an approach called RCM (+), we use RCM with several modifications to fit it into
the non aeronautical industry. But we use that approach only for high and medium risk systems. We
also developed another tool called RCM reverse to deal with low criticality systems (about 40%) that
give you results quite good in a fraction of time and efforts that typical RCM studies.

Jose Duran

From Jean-Francois Ducrot

Hello

Jose, could you explain what you mean by "reverse RCM"?

Thanks

J-F Ducrot

From Jose Duran

RCM reverse is a way we deveoped to study low criticality systems. It allow us to use RCM logic to
verify if the current maintenance strategies worth. It is easy and fast, but it should be performed by
really expert RCM facilitators.

Jose

From Sandy Courtalin

Ron,

I think there is a misunderstanding about my thoughts about maintenance methods. I just tried to say
that in my opinion there is no more than 15% of the world wide industry which has ever used method
like RCM once. I know that RCM appears about 40 years ago but it was principally used by people
who didn't care about the maintenance costs (army, aerospace) because it was about safety issue in
a first instance.

I would like to say that still in my opinion, achieving "maintenance best practice" doesn't mean
applying RCM, TPM or CMMS. Most of the time, companies don't have the skills or the resources to
use these tools or don't have the budget. I think specially about small companies where it is common
pratice to have a manager appointed with two hats "maintenance and production" and quite often the
maintenance is considered as the fifth wheel of the trailer.

So, when they decide to consider the maintenance, you can't arrive and say "you shoud start an RCM
approach". Maybe they need tips about service organisation, planning, shut-down... to achieve "best
maintenance practice" to comply with their commitments. The maintenance policy must be defined
from the strategy of the company and then find solutions in relation with the goals to reach.

Hope you have a better understanding of my thoughts.

Sandy Courtalin

From Trevor Hislop

Sandy

I agree with you. I have worked with many companies to bring them out of a "fire-fighting" (reactive)
mode and start them on the way to more effective maintenance. In most cases, they do not need a
CMMS ,or RCM, or whatever, and they just cannot afford it anyway. I usually teach them the basics of
a sound, simple, Preventive Maintenance program that they can start in one small plant section, e.g.
air compressors. I also get them to give ownership of what is happening directly to one or two of their
maintenance staff. The results are amazing! When proven, it is very easy at very little cost to expand
activities to other plant areas. Remember Nero fiddling while Rome burned ??? Well that is what
happens quite often when big buck maintenance enhancements are suggested.

Trevor

From Peter Reed

Gents:
I believe it is beer shouting time again.

Trevor/Sandy, what you are saying is the way it SHOULD be. Too many times we see companies
spending huge amounts on TLA's only to wonder why all their maintenance woes have not magically
disappeared. While the AP's etc of the world have great products they are still just that, products, not
mystical methods for taking your problems away. It takes getting your hands dirty and talking face to
face to solve the real problems with our respective plants.

We see time and time again where a proactive format, for doing work, yields results far exceeding any
computerised program but we always seem to revert to these more expensive programs and I have
theory on this:

The people, who sell these programs are very well educated and exceedingly knowledgable. They are
also very good speakers and salesmen. Joe Bloggs the Tradesman is a mug (in the nicest possible
way) and only has his hands on experience and gut feel to express his knowledge. Put both of these
in front of a Production Manager, the Salesman with all the right words, the overheads and the glib
ability to make you believe, the tradesman with his dirty overalls, course language and ability to draw
mud maps, and who do you think will get the funds on the day?

What we need is a group of managers who can combine the results of the fancy suits, the flash
presentations, the dirty scrawls on the back of a coaster and the vivid language and come up with a
strategy that suits the needs of the plant AND the business.

I have been reading, avidly, the RCM debate, on this site, and actually took some of the E-mails to
our trades staff to have a read. Most of these people had a glance through and then said "What they
really mean to say is....."

Go figure!!!

Regards

P.Reed

From Ray Beebe

One valid reason for a company or plant taking up activities indicated in this long discussion as TLAs
is surely to shake up complacency, such that real improvement results when people are jolted out of
their "comfort zone"? Hence such actions as re-organisation, shuffling managers around, etc. How
long should someone stay in the one position to avoid complacency? My own longest stay in the one
post was 4 years, the shortest 1 year.

On a related note, mentions of "productivity" grate on me. I heard a senior manager describe how his
power plant was run by such a very small crew of people that "they would all fit into this room".
Nobody was brave enough to ask him about the numbers of contractors who performed the
maintenance work, or those who, on contract, operated and maintained the water treatment plant, the
ash handling plant, etc!.

The only important issue is surely how much is the total cost, however arranged, or perhaps better
still for international benchmarking, the total number of manhours (Personhours?) used in performing
whatever work you are measuring?

Season's greetings - and I look ahead to enjoying more of these debates!

Ray Beebe at Monash University (now, academic productivity - that is another issue!)
From Peter Ball

I love it!

I Just Love 'IT',

Good story came out of WW11, origin was a certain European General. He considered that the Allies
had a real problem which affected their behaviour. If they were confronted with any situation not
clearly defined in basic simple terms, they had to have a Meeting and consult the appropriate Manual.
Europeans (on the other hand) were capable of thinking through their problems immediately, because
of better initial basic training. Thus ... battlefield meetings were not often necessary.

We may see a parallel here with RCM which is, after all, nothing more than plain old "common sense".
An attribute that was somewhat lacking in the country of it's origin, at the time.

Just go searching for MIL-STDs' pertaining to RCM, Logistics support, FMEA, etc. They raise them,
work them, and cancel them with great heaps of paperwork. No small wonder the average workforce
comments are ... !#@%^&***

Go figure ... I love it. (Beer and WINE also)

Peter B.

From Jean-Francois Ducrot

Hello,

I'm sorry, Jose, but I have still some problems with your reverse RCM logic. It's obvious RCM is a very
heavy approach for low criticality systems, and another way of doing could be very interesting.

But I can't understand how you make RCM simpler for those systems. Could you give further
explanations on your methodology?

Tnanks,

From: John Moubray

Kim

Much of what has been written, especially by Steve Turner and Sandy Dunn, in response to your
initial questions about RCM invites further comment and clarification. So here goes.

1: RCM in commercial aviation

Steve Turner states that "RCM was originally developed as a design tool.... ". This comment is simply
not true. To place it in perspective, however, it is necessary to review the evolution of RCM inside and
outside the commercial aviation industry.

Before doing so, it is perhaps worth noting that Mr Turner bases his comments on his ten years of
experience in RCM and on his copy of Nowlan & Heap's report. For the record, I also possess a copy
of Nowlan & Heap's report. In addition, Stan Nowlan himself was my personal mentor in this field,
from 1981 until his death in 1995. I am also currently serving on a working group commissioned by
the US Air Transport Association to review MSG3, which is the name of the process used by the
airlines to develop maintenance programs for commercial aircraft. The comments that follow reflect
this experience.

RCM finds its roots in the early 1960's. The initial development work was done by the North American
civil aviation industry. The airlines at that time began to realise that many of their maintenance
philosophies were not only too expensive but also actively dangerous. This realisation prompted the
industry to put together a series of "Maintenance Steering Groups" to re-examine everything they
were doing to keep their aircraft airborne. These groups consisted of representatives of the aircraft
manufacturers, the airlines and the FAA.

The first attempt at a rational, zero-based process for formulating maintenance strategies was
promulgated by the Air Transport Association in Washington DC in 1968. The first attempt is now
known as MSG 1 (from the first letters of Maintenance Steering Group). A refinement - now known as
MSG 2 - was promulgated in 1970.

In the mid-1970's the US Department of Defence wanted to know more about the then state of the art
in aviation maintenance thinking. They commissioned a report on the subject from the aviation
industry. As mentioned by Ron Doucet, this report was written by Stanley Nowlan and Howard Heap
of United Airlines. They gave it the title "Reliability Centered Maintenance". The report was published
in 1978, and I agree with Steve Turner's comment that it is still one of the most important documents -
if not the most important - in the history of physical asset management. It is available from the US
Government National Technical Information Service, Springfield, Virginia.

Nowlan & Heap's report represented a considerable advance on MSG 2 thinking. It was used as a
basis for MSG 3, which was promulgated in 1980. MSG 3 has since been revised twice. Revision 1
was issued in 1988 and revision 2 in 1993. It is used to this day to develop prior-to-service
maintenance programs for new aircraft types (recently including the Boeing 777 and Airbus 330/340).

Copies of MSG 3 revision 2 are available from the Air Transport Association, Washington DC.

Several points to note from this history:

 the term "reliability centered maintenance" is not used in commercial aviation. The term does not even
appear in the MSG3 document. In fact, there are some fundamental differences between RCM (both as
it is described in the Nowlan & Heap report and as it is described in SAE JA1011) and MSG3. Many of
these differences find their roots in assumptions made about the training and skills of the maintenance
technicians found in commercial aviation and in other industries. (In general, the former are much more
highly trained and their training is focused - far more so than usual - on the needs of a specific industry.
As a result, many of the tasks in maintenance programs developed using MSG3 are described and
grouped in ways that have precisely defined meanings within commercial aviation but that are
meaningless outside commercial aviation.)
 the Nowlan & Heap report was commissioned by the US Department of Defence. Consequently, as the
authors well knew at the time, it was written specifically for use by people outside the commercial
aviation industry despite the differences between MSG3 and RCM, both are very much tools used for
the development of maintenance programs, not design tools. For instance, the first words in the preface
to Nowlan & Heap's report are "This volume provides the first full discussion of reliability-centered
maintenance as a logical discipline for the development of scheduled maintenance programs." The
present title of the MSG3 document is "Maintenance Program Development Document (MSG-3)
Revision 2". (My italics.) The question of design only enters into the application of both processes when
it is apparent that maintenance cannot provide a satisfactory way of dealing with failure modes identified
during the FMEA.

2: Maintenance strategy formulation in the US nuclear power industry.

One justification put forward by Steve Turner (and others) for using retroactive or reverse RCM
approaches like PMO 2000 is that they have been used in the US nuclear power industry. I personally
have not applied RCM in a US nuclear power station (although our network has assisted nuclear
facilities with the application of RCM II in other countries.) Consequently, I cannot comment
personally on the application of RCM in the US nuclear environment. However, I am able to draw your
attention to comments made by Dr David Worledge, who perhaps knows more than anyone else
about the application of RCM to US nuclear power stations. Dr Worledge worked for the Electric
Power Research Institute (EPRI) from 1981 to 1995, and headed the initial pilot applications of RCM
in US nuclear power stations from 1982 to 1985, and their subsequent development. (He now works
as an independent consultant.)

On 24 and 25 August 1999, an RCM conference was held in Denver, Colorado. It was organised by
Electric Utility Consultants Inc and was aimed exclusively at the electricity transmission and
distribution sectors. The speakers were a whole variety of RCM consultants and end-users, myself
included. I made a few comments about RCM in the US nuclear power industry during a presentation
on the history of RCM. After this presentation, Dr Worledge stood up to make some additional
comments from the floor.

The gist of his comments was as follows: The initial maintenance programs in US nuclear power
plants were developed in conventional fashion, relying heavily on vendor recommendations.
Continuing efforts to enhance safety and reliability, and ever increasing regulatory requirements
resulted in utility management at some plants questioning whether the overall result was a significant
degree of over-maintenance. By the early 1980's, the nuclear power industry often seemed to be
faced with a choice of either generating power or doing the prescribed PM. They had to find a way of
reducing the PM workloads quickly without prejudicing safety or reliability.

EPRI became aware of the Nowlan & Heap report entitled "Reliability-centered Maintenance", which
was published in 1978. This seemed to offer a solution to their problem. However, after initial
applications of "classical RCM" by EPRI, many plants developed their own methods for maintenance
optimization, some of which departed from RCM principles. Dr Worledge stressed to bring some order
to this situation it became EPRI's objective to reduce PM workloads using standardized but
"streamlined" approaches which took advantage of certain features of the design of nuclear power
plants, but which kept close to the philosophy of classical RCM. They took the view that high levels of
redundancy in their safety systems, high levels of regulator-imposed failure-finding tasks, and the
fairly simple mission of the power generating systems at such plants could validly support certain
simplifications of the methodology. They also took the view that at least in older plants the existing
operating experience had encountered all reasonably likely failure modes, further supplemented in
some cases by comprehensive risk assessments and very detailed record keeping carried out by the
nuclear power industry itself. In addition, each plant already had a detailed system functional review
performed in its Final Safety Analysis Report, as part of obtaining its operating license. Consequently,
they felt that the function analysis and the FMEA steps embodied in the RCM process could be
simplified.

A further notable aspect of their situation was that in most plants all the key protective devices and
safety systems used in nuclear power stations were already covered by fairly comprehensive
maintenance programs. As a result, there was often more interest in removing superfluous
maintenance activities, which in some cases were actually damaging to reliability and availability of
safety systems. However, there was still a drive to improve reliability in power generating systems
because the industry was in need of increasing plant capacity factors.

The most abbreviated of three streamlined approaches, (recommended by EPRI in EPRI TR-105365,
September 1995), modified the RCM process by setting up a list of simple functional questions such
as "does this component failure lead to a plant trip, or to a power reduction of >5%, the loss of a
safety function, to a plant transient, or a personnel hazard, or a delay in start-up", etc, without further
functional analysis. Two additional streamlined approaches in the EPRI report closely resembled
classical RCM with some liberties taken over documentation, and the early separation of clearly less
important components.

A further approach which some have described as "reverse RCM" where existing PM tasks are simply
re-examined as to their utility and cost effectiveness, was sanctioned by EPRI only in urgent
situations (under the name Outage Management Assessment) to try to reduce the pressing workload
for an upcoming, already scheduled, refueling outage. Reverse RCM was never recommended by
EPRI for general use, and did not form part of its recommended streamlined approaches.
Dr Worledge concluded his remarks by saying that in his opinion, these processes achieved their
limited objectives in the nuclear power industry, in that they led to very substantial reductions in PM
workloads without appearing to prejudice safety or reliability. However, he then went on to express
the opinion that caution should be exercised when a process developed to solve a very specific set of
problems in the unique environment of the US nuclear power industry is proposed for use in other
industries - such as oil and gas, thermal power generation and electricity T&D - where the same initial
conditions may not apply.

3: The SAE RCM standard

Since the Nowlan & Heap report was published, a great many processes have emerged that claim to
be RCM. Many of them bear little or no resemblance to the process described by Nowlan & Heap.
This became a cause of grave concern to many organisations. In particular, the US Naval Air
Command (Navair), which was one of the sponsors of the original N&H report, found that some
vendors were using all sorts of weird and wonderful processes which they described as "RCM" to
develop maintenance programs for equipment that they were selling to Navair. (The history of RCM in
the US military has been ably described by Dana Netherton, chairman of the SAE RCM committee, in
articles that appeared in maintenance journals in Australia, the USA and the UK.)

These aberrant RCM processes led Navair to approach the SAE - as a recognised standards-setting
institution with close ties both to the US Military and to the aerospace sector - for help with the
development of a standard that could be used to define what is and what is not RCM. This standard
(SAE JA1011) was published in August 1999 and can be obtained from the SAE at www.sae.org.

The standard is important because of a tendency for vendors of strategy formulation processes other
than RCM to compare their processes with RCM, but without specifying which version of RCM. In
particular, beware of comparisons to something called "Classical" RCM. Nowhere in the literature on
this subject have I encountered a description of a process which is specifically labelled "Classical
RCM", so it seems to be a convenient mirage. In some of the cases where the term has been used, it
seems to refer to an horrendously complicated variant of the process which not only calls for the
analysis to be carried out at far too low a level in the equipment hierarchy, but also requires users to
prepare complex (and usually unnecessary) functional block diagrams before starting the analysis.
Almost any analytical process is likely to be an order of magnitude quicker than this aberration.

All this means that when asked to compare any non-standard version of RCM with RCM, care needs
to be taken to establish whether the comparison is being made with a version of RCM that complies
with the SAE standard.

4: RCM in industries other than aviation and nuclear power

Sandy Dunn states that "I have recently come to the conclusion that, in contrast to the position that is
put forward by John Moubray, Ron Doucet and others from the RCM II religion, the major problem is
that RCM II (and by definition RCM) has NOT been sufficiently adapted to meet the needs of industry
outside the airline industry."

Firstly, as discussed in section 2 above, RCM is not used by the airline industry. Secondly, as
discussed in section 3 above, the SAE RCM Standard (not RCM II) defines what RCM is. (From now
on, unless stated otherwise, when I use the term RCM, I will be referring to any process - of which
RCM II is one - that complies fully with the SAE Standard.)

These two points apart, my view of the applicability of RCM is very different. Together with Aladon's
network of licensees, I have been directly and indirectly involved with the application of RCM II on
more than 1200 industrial sites spanning 42 countries. These applications have embodied the
performance of several thousand RCM analyses.

It is true to say that the application of RCM has not been successful in every case. It can be said to
have failed in about one third of the orgainsations where it has been tried, either because the
organisations concerned did not derive the benefits that they hoped to from the RCM process or the
RCM initiative collapsed before it could yield much in the way of significant results. In our experience,
none of the initiatives that failed did so for technical reasons. Without exception, the initiatives that
failed did so for organisational reasons. Of these, the two most common reasons for failure are:

 the principal internal sponsor of the initiative quit the organisation or moved to a different position before
the new ways of thinking embodied in the RCM process could be institutionalised
 the internal sponsor and/or the consultant who was acting as the change agent could not generate
sufficient enthusiasm for the process for it to be applied in a way which would yield results.

Of course, if one third of these applications have failed, then two thirds have been successful. This
success rate is at least as good as, if not better than, the success rate achieved by major
organisational change initiatives in general.

At this point, it is worth noting Sandy Dunn's observation that his experience in Australia was that "for
every ten organisations that started to implement RCM II, only one ever implemented the process on
anything other than a "pilot project" scale". He also states that these failures were not "due to any
failure on the part of the consultant concerned." Firstly, my records indicate that his personal
experience of RCM II is indeed true. Only about one tenth of the RCM II projects with which he
personally was associated went beyond the pilot stage. However, a great many other RCM
practitioners have been active in Australia for the past ten years, and their collective experience is
that about two thirds of the applications of RCM to date have progressed well beyond the pilot stage
(not 1 in 10). This sharp contrast bears out my own experience gained from working with some 200
licensed RCM II practitioners worldwide over a period of 15 years - of whom about 120 are currently
active: there is in fact a high correlation between the success rate of RCM II applications and the
change management capabilities of the consultants involved. (Among others, the British Royal Navy,
which is a major user of SAE-compliant RCM, has come to understand that the capabilities of
individual consultants are every bit as important as the track record of their employers. So much so
that the RN now insists on interviewing at great length every RCM consultant that is to be placed at
their disposal, in addition to verifying the commercial bona fides of their employers.)

When discussing the "success" of RCM, we need to look at both the economic benefits and the
question of risk.

5a: The economic benefits of RCM

Kim, you are absolutely correct to observe that "... a lot of maintenance decision makers I have met
look mainly at the tangible returns (minimum cost, minimum project duration) rather than the projected
expected returns of carrying out RCM." In fact, if RCM is correctly applied by properly trained people
working under the direction of a skilled facilitator, and the project has been properly planned before it
starts, it usually pays for itself in between two weeks and two months. (In some cases, the payback
period has been measured in days and sometimes one or two years, but the norm is weeks to
months.) This is a very rapid payback indeed.

In nearly every case, these economic benefits flow from improved plant performance rather than
reductions in the direct cost of maintenance (although very substantial reductions in direct
maintenance costs have been achieved in some cases, especially by military users). From the
economic point of view, improved plant performance can manifest itself in a variety of ways, such as
an increase in total throughput, a reduction in failure rates, an increase in plant availability or a
reduction in scrap rates. Some examples are as follows:

 a small dairy products factory in Scotland: a 20% increase in total throughput. This increased the
contribution to group profits at plant level by £1 million per annum, while the total cost of the project
(including the cost of the manhours spent undergoing training and attending review group meetings)
was less than £200 000. The analysis of this entire plant was completed in three months
 a plant manufacturing steel wheels for automobiles in England: productivity increased from 35 wheels
per man per shift to 105 wheels per man per shift in the space of six months (same machines, same
people)
  a paper mill in Pennsylvania: a complex new boiler control system failed five times in three years,
shutting off steam (and co-generated electricity supplies) to the paper mill, causing a complete mill
shutdown. The total cost of these failures was US$11 million, and the company had been unable to
solve the problems using conventional problem-solving techniques. They then applied RCM. The project
took six months, the RCM-derived recommendations were implemented and there were no further
failures in the ensuing three years.The total cost of performing the RCM analysis and implementing the
proposed remedies was US$200 000. A $11m saving for an outlay of $200k amounts to a payback of
about one week
 an iron ore mine in Canada: at a recent conference in Toronto, Ron Doucet cited the case of an RCM
analysis of an ore crusher. The analysis cost CDN$80 000 and led to an increase in throughput that was
worth a nett $4.8 million per annum. A payback of less than a week.
 a microelectronics assembly plant in Malta: scrap rates on one production line were reduced from 4% to
50 parts per million - an 80-fold reduction - in the space of six weeks. Payback in this case was
measured in weeks. I could cite a great many other cases. (Sandy Dunn says that RCM "... is complete
overkill in most situations in most industries." If results like these are overkill, then long live overkill.)

Both Steve Turner and Sandy Dunn also state that RCM is only worth applying in "high-risk" industries
such as petrochemicals and oil & gas. Steve Turner goes further, by suggesting that it is a waste of
time to apply RCM to mature plants. Suffice it to say that none of the above examples are from "high
risk" petrochemical-type industries, and all the plants concerned had been in service for at least three
years, and in some cases much longer.

Cost-effectiveness apart, another comment frequently made about true RCM is that "it takes too long".
For instance, at one point, Steve Turner writes: "If you use PMO2000 you will have these (hazardous
problems) under control in one year, if you use traditional RCM it will take you six." This implies that it
would take six years to analyse all the equipment in a major facility using true RCM. Suffice it to say
that the world's largest coal fired power station used RCM II to analyse all 65 of its major systems in a
period of 18 months, without losing a microwatt of generating capacity due to the analysis and in
circumstances where it was as difficult for them to commit key resources to this process as it has
been anywhere else in the world. (Or I could cite the case of the two Malaysian CCGT power stations
that also analysed all their equipment in 18 months, or the large UK candy factory - employing 55
maintenance craftsmen - that did likewise. And so on .....)

5b: RCM and risk

Everyone who has commented on RCM seems to agree that it is a good tool for developing
maintenance programs in "high risk" situations. Sandy Dunn is also correct when he says "I have
heard it said (even by John Moubray himself) that one cannot justify applying RCM to all equipment
items - some equipment items have such low impact on business risk that the effort required to
perform RCM analysis on them is greater than the potential benefits." However, as those who have
heard me speaking at conferences in the recent past will be aware, my position on this subject is
changing.

I am increasingly coming around to the view that no physical asset or system can be deemed to be
"low risk" unless it has been subjected at the very least to a zero-based FMECA (and preferably a full
RCM review) that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that it is in fact low risk. There are two reasons
why my viewpoint has changed.

The first reason is actually a combination of factors: feedback from our network concerning the results
of the thousands of RCM II analyses that are being performed around the world, and incidents in
supposedly "low risk" industries that have had very grave business implications.

The feedback from our network speaks of case after case of supposedly innocuous systems that turn
out to embody very surprising and potentially deadly failure modes. In our experience, on average
about 4% (1 in 25) failure modes are deemed to have direct safety or environmental implications. We
also frequently find that as many as 25% of failure modes have potentially hazardous consequences
but are not currently receiving any form of PM. Most of the latter failure modes deal with protective
devices that have not been receiving attention any sort of attention prior to the RCM II analysis. This
issue is discussed further later.
(These data differ totally from those put forward by Steve Turner when he says "Further to this, in my
ten or so years of facilitating RCM analysis, I have put about 1 in every 200 failures in the hazard
category. Of these, only once have I ever felt the RCM team had uncovered a potential hazard that
was not receiving any PM. My rough calculations tell me that the benefit of RCM over PMO2000 is the
one new hazard found in 15,000 failure modes." It is also worth noting that although Steve Turner did
attend Aladon's RCM II practitioners' course, he always seems to compare PMO 2000 with one of the
forms of "Classical" RCM.)

What about the supposedly "low risk" industries? Two sectors that are frequently said to be "low risk" -
and hence not worth rigorous analysis - are automobile factories and food plants. In fact, simply
reading the newspapers shows how inappropriate it is to dismiss either of these industries as low risk,
as the following examples indicate:

 the boiler that blew up (during a maintenance inspection) at Ford's River Rouge plant in Detroit in
February 1999, killing six people and shutting the plant down for 1.5 weeks. A huge business risk.
 the failure of the Firestone tyres on Ford Explorers which has been partly attributed to the design of the
tyres, partly (and arguably) to the pressures at which the tyres were operated and partly (mainly?) to
failures (failure modes) in the manufacturing process used to produce the tyres in one plant. These
failures pose a serious threat to the continued existence of Firestone as a company - perhaps the
ulimate business risk
 the failure of a filter used in the Perrier water bottling plant in France, leading to the recall of hundreds of
thousands of bottles of Perrier water at enormous cost to the company
 the contamination (another failure mode) of pallets used by Coca Cola in Belgium, leading again to a
massive and very expensive product recall, in addition to seriously damaging the reputation of the
company in Europe. Note that all these failures involve the failure of physical assets. In the case of the
Coca Cola plant, it was pallets, which are just the sort of simple, massively redundant items that are
likely to be dismissed as "non-critical" (until after the event).

The second reason why my views on criticality are changing concerns the legislative environment in
which more and more users of physical assets are operating. The reaction of society as a whole to
equipment failures is changing at warp speed as we move into the 21st century. The changes began
with sweeping legislation governing industrial safety, mainly in the 1970's. Among the best known
examples of such legislation are the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 in the United States
and the Health and Safety at Work Act of 1974 in the United Kingdom. These Acts are fairly general in
nature, and similar laws have been passed in nearly all the major industrialised countries. Their intent
is to ensure that employers provide a generally safe working environment for their employees.

These Acts were followed by a second wave of more specific safety-oriented laws and regulations
such as OSHA Regulation Nº 1910.119: "Process Safety Management of Highly Hazardous
Chemicals" in the United States and the "Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations" in
the United Kingdom. Both of these regulations were first promulgated in the early to mid-1990's. They
are noteworthy examples of a then-new requirement for the users of hazardous materials to perform
formal analyses or assessments of the associated systems, and to document the analyses for
subsequent inspection if necessary by regulators.

These two sets of developments represent a steady increase in legal requirements to exercise - and
to be able to demonstrate that we are exercising - responsible custodianship of the assets under our
control. They have placed a significant burden on the managers of the assets concerned. However,
they reflect the rising expectations of society in terms of industrial safety, and we have no choice but
to comply as best we can.

It would be nice if it all ended there, but unfortunately this tide has not stopped rising. The late 1990's
have seen even more changes, this time concerning the sanctions that society now wishes to impose
if things go wrong. Until the mid-90's, if a failure occurred whose consequences were serious enough
to warrant criminal proceedings, the proceedings usually ended at worst with a substantial fine
imposed on the organisation found to be at fault, and the matter - at least from the criminal point of
view - usually ended there. (Occasionally, the organisation's permit to operate was withdrawn, as in
the case of the ValuJet airline after the crash in Florida on 11 May 1996. This effectively put the airline
out of business in its then-current form.)

However, following recent disasters, a movement is now developing not only to punish the
organisations concerned, but also to impose criminal sanctions on individual managers. In other
words, under certain circumstances, individual managers can be sent to prison in connection with
equipment failures that have sufficiently nasty consequences. Stephen Young has mentioned the
pending legislation in the States of Victoria and Queensland in Australia, which propose custodial
sentences not only for specific individuals, but for whole teams of people. Ron Doucet also mentioned
the changes to the Evidence Act in Victoria.

Legislative developments of this sort have not only taken place in Australia. For instance, in the
United Kingdom, John Prescott, the Minister of Transport, has stated that in the light of the official
inquiry into the Paddington rail crash that occurred in 1999, he will introduce a law for a crime to be
called 'corporate killing', part of which will entail prison sentences for specific executives. In the United
States, following the outcry about the accidents involving tire tread separation on SUV's, section
30170 of the "Motor Vehicle and Motor Vehicle Defect Notification Act" was revised in October 2000
to include prison sentences of up to 15 years for "directors, officers or agents" of vehicle
manufacturers who commit specified offences in connection with vehicles that fail in a way that
causes death or bodily injury.

There is considerable controversy about the reasonableness of these initiatives, and even some
doubt about their ultimate enforceability. However, from the point of view of people involved in the
management of physical assets, the issue is not what is reasonable, but that we are increasingly
being held personally accountable for actions that we take on behalf of our employers. Not only that,
but if we are called to account in the event of a serious incident, it will be in circumstances that could
culminate in jail sentences.

(Kim, in this context, you were actually not joking when you wrote "With all this talk of litigation it's
amazing we don't have the company legal eagles doing reviews of their equipment strategies". I know
of at least one major petrochemical company that requires all FMEA's to be reviewed by the
company's lawyers before they are signed off.)

The message to us all is that society is getting so sick of industrial accidents with serious
consequences that not only is it seeking to call individuals as well as corporations to account, but (in
the case of the Victoria Evidence Act) that it is prepared to alter well-established principles of
jurisprudence to do so. Under these circumstances, everyone involved in the management of physical
assets needs to take greater care than ever to ensure that every step they take in executing their
official duties is beyond reproach. It is becoming professionally suicidal to do otherwise.

6: Planned Maintenance Optimisation

As explained by Steve Turner, PMO starts not by defining the functions of the asset (as specified in
the SAE RCM Standard), but starts with the existing maintenance tasks. Users of this approach are
then asked to try to identify the failure mode that each task is supposed to be preventing, and then
work forward again through the last three steps of the RCM decision process to re-examine the
consequences of each failure and (hopefully) to identify a more cost-effective failure management
policy. (This approach is what is most often meant when the term 'streamlined RCM' is used. It is also
known as "backfit" RCM or "RCM in reverse".)

These retroactive approaches are superficially very appealing, so much so that I tried them myself on
numerous occasions when I was new to RCM. However, in reality they are also among the most
dangerous of the streamlined methodologies, for the following reasons:

 they assume that existing maintenance programs cover just about all the failure modes that are
reasonably likely to require some sort of preventive maintenance. In the case of every maintenance
program that I have encountered to date, this assumption is simply not valid. If RCM is applied correctly,
it transpires that nowhere near all of the failure modes that actually require PM are covered by existing
maintenance tasks. As a result, a considerable number of tasks have to be added. Most of the tasks that
 are added apply to protective devices, as discussed below. (Other tasks are eliminated because they
are found to be unnecessary, or the type of task is changed, or the frequency is changed. The nett effect
is usually a reduction in perceived PM workloads, typically by between 40% and 70%.)
 when applying retroactive RCM, it is often very difficult to identify exactly what failure cause motivated
the selection of a particular task, so much so that either inordinate amounts of time are wasted trying to
establish the real connection, or sweeping assumptions are made that very often prove to be wrong.
These two problems alone make this approach an extremely shaky foundation upon which to build a
maintenance program.
 in re-assessing the consequences of each failure mode, it is still necessary to ask whether "the loss of
function caused by the failure mode will become evident to the operating crew under normal
circumstances". This question can only be answered by establishing what function is actually lost when
the failure occurs. This in turn means that the people doing the analysis have to start identifying
functions anyway, but they are now trying to do so on an ad hoc basis halfway through the analysis. If
they do not, they start making even more sweeping - and hence often incorrect - assumptions that add
to the shakiness of the results.
 retroactive approaches are particularly weak on specifying appropriate maintenance for protective
devices. As stated on page 172 of the second edition of my book on RCM: "at the time of writing, many
existing maintenance programs provide for fewer than one third of protective devices to receive any
attention at all (and then usually at inappropriate intervals). The people who operate and maintain the
plant covered by these programs are aware that another third of these devices exist but pay them no
attention, while it is not unusual to find that no-one even knows that the final third exist. This lack of
awareness and attention means that most of the protective devices in industry - our last line of
protection when things go wrong - are maintained poorly or not at all." So if one uses a retroactive
approach to RCM, in most cases a great many protective devices will continue to receive no attention in
the future because no tasks were specified for them in the past. Given the enormity of the risks
associated with unmaintained protective devices, this weakness of retroactive RCM alone makes it in
my opinion completely indefensible. (Some variants of the retroactive approach - such as S-RCM - try to
get around this problem by specifying that protective systems should be analysed separately, often
outside the RCM framework. This gives rise to the absurd situation that two analytical processes have to
be applied in order to compensate for the deficiencies created by attempts to streamline one of them)
 more so than any of the other streamlined versions of RCM, retroactive approaches focus on
maintenance workload reduction rather than plant performance improvement (which is the primary goal
of function-oriented true RCM). Since the returns generated by using RCM purely as a tool to reduce
maintenance costs are usually lower - sometimes one or two orders of magnitude lower - than the
returns generated by using it to improve reliability, the use of the ostensibly cheaper retroactive
approach becomes self defeating on economic grounds, in that it virtually guarantees much lower
returns than true RCM.

7 Summary

In nearly all cases, the proponents of the retroactive approaches to RCM claim that these approaches
can produce much the same results as true RCM in much less time. (Steve Turner claims that PMO is
six times quicker, although he compares PMO with "Classical" RCM, not RCM II.) However, the above
discussion indicates that not only do they produce nothing like the same results as true RCM, but that
they contain logical or procedural flaws which increase risk to an extent that overwhelms any small
advantage they might offer in reduced application costs. It also transpires that if one seeks to avoid
making some of the more gratuitous assumptions required by retroactive techniques, they actually
end up taking longer and costing more to apply than true RCM, so even this small advantage is lost.
As a result, the business case for applying retroactive RCM is suspect at best.

However, a rather more serious point needs to be borne in mind when considering these techniques.
The very word 'streamline' suggests that something is being omitted.(For instance, Steve Turner
states that PMO usually omits the function identifcation step, and that as a result, it only identifies half
of the reasonably likely failure modes that would be identified using even 'Classical' RCM.) In other
words, there is to a greater or lesser extent a degree of sub-optimisation embodied in all of these
techniques.

Leaving things out inevitably increases risk. More specifically, it increases the probability that an
unanticipated failure, possibly one with very serious consequences, could occur. If this does happen,
as suggested above, managers of the organisation involved are increasingly likely to find themselves
called personally to account. If the worst comes to the worst, they will not only have to explain, often
in an emotionally-charged courtroom confronted by bitterly hostile legal Rottweilers, what went wrong
and why. They will also have to explain why they deliberately chose a sub-optimal decision-making
process to establish their asset management strategies in the first place, rather than using one which
complies fully with a Standard set by an internationally-recognised standards-setting organisation. It
would not be me that they would have to convince, not their peers and not their managers, but a
judge and jury.

One rationale often advanced for using the streamlined methods is that it is better to do something
than to do nothing. However, this rationale misses the point that all the analytical processes described
above, retroactive or otherwise, require their users to document the analyses. This means that a clear
audit trail exists showing all the key information and decisions underlying the asset management
strategy, in most cases where no such documentation has existed before. If a sub-optimal approach
is used to formulate these strategies, the existence of written records makes every shortcut much
clearer to any investigators than they would otherwise have been. (This in turn may suggest that
perhaps we should simply forget about all of these formal analytical processes. Unfortunately, the
demand for documented analyses embodied in the second wave of safety legislation mentioned
above does not allow us this option.)

A further rationale for streamlining says something like "we have been using this approach for a few
years now and we haven't had any accidents, so it must be all right." This rationale betrays a
complete misunderstanding of the basic principles of risk. Specifically, no analytical methodology can
completely eliminate risk. However, the difference between using a more rigorous methodology and a
less rigorous methodology may be the difference between a probability of a catastrophic event of one
in a million versus one in ten thousand. In both cases, the event may happen next year or it may not
happen for thousands of years, but in the second case, it is a hundred times more likely. If such an
event were to happen, the user of a form of RCM that complies with the SAE Standard would be able
to claim that he or she exercised prudent, responsible custodianship by applying a rigorous process
that complies with an internationally recognised standard, and as such would be in a highly defensible
position. Under the same circumstances, the user of any "downsized" and hence non-compliant form
of RCM is on much, much shakier ground.

8 Conclusion

It is interesting to note that all but one of the people who have chosen to comment at length in this
discussion (myself included) are consultants. Consultants of course have commercial axes to grind,
which will lead many readers to say "well, he would say that, wouldn't he." This leads me to make two
final suggestions in closing:

 take special note of the views of the one commentator who is a practising maintenance manager and
hence who does not have a commercial axe to grind, but who feels strongly enough about all this stuff -
based on personal experience - to share his thoughts at length (Ron Doucet of the Iron Ore Company of
Canada), and
 if you really want to satisfy yourself about the relative merits of each approach, try them both on a pilot
scale, preferably on the same type of equipment. Look at the outcomes in terms of documented
maintenance programs (with a special eye on defensibility) and in terms of benefits achieved related to
costs. Then make up your own mind.

With best wishes for the festive season

John Moubray

From: Andrew Jardine

I was very pleased to read the RCM overview by John Moubray. It certainly helped me to put much of
the recent correspondence in perspective.
Andrew Jardine

From Peter Ball

When I casually suggested to Stephen recently "Grasp the subject - the words will follow" little did I
envisage the 6912 word explanation from JM himself, in defence of his RCM.

There seems to be no end of grief outpouring concerning this Classical Vs Streamlined RCM which
now incorporates Conventional PMO, Reverse RCM, and "RETROACTIVE RCM" even. The big funny
of it all seems to be the ordained role of SAE to provide a Standard (JA1011) to prop-up "Classical
RCM". Ho Ho Ho!

Streamlined RCM appears to be considered as an anathema.

My view, for what it is worth is that there is no BIG DEAL here.

Put to one side all of these "versions" of the methodology, and get back to BASICS.

Consider basic reliability centred maintenance. All that is required is a sensible mechanical (or
electrical) engineer with access to the plant asset register, and the accounts department.

The tools needed include:

 FMECA (Failure Mode Effects and Criticality Analysis),

 FTA (Fault Tree Analysis),
 Pareto Analysis,
 Block Diagrams,
 Weibull Analysis, and
 an understanding of Risk / Cost Management.

No need for RCM trained teams and in-house facilitators; or software that comes only with the
training.

Do not overlook the human aspects of reliability; Good Management providing Good working
environment, usually results in Good Reliability.

In the mid to late 80's I introduced 'basic' reliability centred maintenance into the Australian Uranium
mining industry. The word Reliability up until then was a management consideration of employee
performance. Using the above 'tools' I developed the appropriate maintenance strategies with the end
result that the insurance cover was withdrawn from the underwriters, the first year rewards were
published as in excess of $AU1million, and things stopped breaking-down.

Happy 2001 to Everyone.

Peter Ball

From Trevor Hislop

Yeeeeeah !!!
Three cheers for common "basic" sense from Peter !

Trevor

From Dana Netherton

I sympathize with the sentiments ... but sentiments are no substitute for judgement, especially when
valuable and dangerous physical assets are at stake.

I know I'm new to this forum, so a word of introduction may be in order. I'm Dana Netherton, the chair
of the SAE subcommittee that wrote the RCM standard. I understand that Peter (Ball) has "used my
name in vain" a few times in the past. I finally thought I would take a look for myself. :-)

In the interests of fair play, I should say a little about my background and setting. I started my working
life in US Navy nuclear submarines (naval officer). After I left the Navy and finished some other
academic studies, I went to work for an American consulting firm with US Navy contracts. Back in the
late 1970s, that firm introduced the US Navy to RCM, and so a few years after I joined the firm, about
12 years ago, I began working in the field of maintenance management consulting and RCM. Most of
my SAE committee's substantive work on the RCM standard was done while I worked for that firm. My
role on the committee was to protect the interests of our US Navy client.

In recent years, that company has become enamoured of a process similar to the "reverse RCM" that
John Moubray described in his very thorough posting of a few days ago. My work on the SAE
committee showed me wider horizons, and gave me a broader perspective, than I had had while
ensconced in my consultant's office.

In that committee, I met US Navy aviation people with experience in RCM (unconnected with my
employer, or with Aladon) who took one look at "reverse RCM" and recoiled -- then returned to make
biting and unanswerable comments about it. I met commercial people with experience in RCM -- in
the steel industry, in the chemical processing industry -- who had the same reaction and the same
comments. After some very serious soul-searching, I finally decided that I could not continue to
support my employer's efforts to encourage people to use "reverse RCM" -- and also retain my sense
of professional integrity.

So I left them, about a year and a half ago, once the SAE RCM standard was largely put to bed and
our Navy client's interests were protected. I now own my own small consulting firm, Athos
Corporation, which is a member of the Aladon Network. (BTW, my Aladon license is restricted to
North America, so I have no commercial interest in Australia.) As I had expected, and as I am sure
that people here can appreciate, starting a new business from scratch is no gold mine by any means;
but I go to bed at night with a clear conscience.

Now then. I'd like to say two things about the SAE standard. First, I'd like to address the reasons why
someone might like to use it. Then, I'd like to address what questions it does *not* answer -- because
there are some important questions that it was deliberately intended to sidestep.

1. Why use the SAE standard?

As people can appreciate, I'm sure, I have spoken to a lot of people about the SAE standard over the
past several years -- in many cases from conference platforms (in the USA). I have seen a few
complaints about it, in the year or so since it was published in Oct 1999.

So far, every complaint has come from a consultant.

So far, every comment I have seen from a user has ranged from favorable to devoutely grateful.
Why?

Because the standard is not intended to meet the needs of consultants. It is intended to meet the
needs of users.

Consultants need to establish the credibility of their process to their prospective clients. If this means
attaching a recognized TLA (three-letter acronym) to whatever the heck it is that they do, then hooray,
go for it! (All too often.)

Users need to know what sort of pig is inside this poke that has this label on it, this TLA that seems to
say that the pig is such-and- so. When they buy a poke with *this* label on it, users need to be
confident that they are getting *this* sort of pig inside it. (This is especially tricky when the users are
not yet experts in the process they are about to embark on.)

(Is everyone in this international forum familiar with the slang phrase, "buying a pig in a poke"? In the
US, at least, this means "buying something sight unseen" -- something that is *said* to be a pig, in an
unopened sack or bag (an unopened "poke"). And it is almost always used to describe something you
don't want to do ("Oh, I don't want to buy a pig in a poke"), because it carries the implication that what
you are carrying away after the purchase is probably not what you thought you were buying. That's
how I'm using the phrase here.)

In the 20+ years since the US Department of Defense published Nowlan & Heap's report, that TLA
"RCM" has been attached to a heck of a lot of pokes, with a heck of a lot of different kinds of pigs
inside.

Peter's e-mail, below, shows one kind of non-Nowlan-and-Heap pig that gets stuffed into the RCM
poke. He asserts that "basic" RCM consists of a single sensible engineer with access to the plant's list
of its physical assets and to its accounts department, an engineer who has tools such as the
following:

 FMECA (Failure Mode Effects and Criticality Analysis),

 FTA (Fault Tree Analysis),
 Pareto Analysis,
 Block Diagrams,
 Weibull Analysis, and
 an understanding of Risk / Cost Management.

Of these tools, at least four are not mentioned at all by Nowlan and Heap: FTA, Pareto Analysis,
Block Diagrams, and Weibull Analysis.

(N&H have a decision logic tree, but it is a different logic tree from the one customarily used in Fault
Tree Analysis. Being aviation people, they are focused on airplanes, and they assume that the entire
airplane will be reviewed -- therefore they do not use Pareto Analysis to decide which assets do not
deserve a review. Their process does not require Block Diagrams, though it might use such diagrams
if already available. And the failure curves they developed -- the famous six curves -- were not
produced by Weibull Analysis, but by a different process that neither uses nor generates
mathematical equations (such as the Weibull function). (Appendix C of their report, "Actuarial
Analysis", describes their analytic process.) )

Of the remaining tools, the process used by N&H to examine failure modes is not the same as the
FMECA process that is described in the various FMECA standards available from the US military, the
SAE, and other sources. For one thing, N&H use the crucial term "failure mode" to refer to something
that FMECA does *not* call a "failure mode". (We in the SAE RCM subcommittee found this out when
we attempted to establish liaison/contact with the SAE subcommittee that is struggling to write a new
FMECA standard.) )
And "an understanding of risk/cost management" is far looser, far more vague, than N&H's very
specific process for addressing risks with respect to safety and economics. Does Peter mean N&H's
approach to "risk/cost management"? Or does he mean someone else's approach? Or one he came
up with on his own?

So. Peter's process may be very useful. It probably borrows valuable concepts and features from
Nowlan and Heap's report. I'm sure he feels he has gotten very good results with it. I have no reason
to dispute his results.

But the process he described in his e-mail is not the process that Nowlan and Heap lay out in their
report.

So someone who *wants* Nowlan and Heap's process, and who hires Peter because Peter says he
uses "RCM" (the name that Nowlan and Heap made famous), is likely to get something different from
what he (the user) wants.

I don't pretend to know what's happening in Australia. I do know that, very quickly after the US
Department of Defense decided to abandon Military Standards in the mid-1990s, the US Navy started
getting pokes bearing the label, "RCM", with Joe Blow's pet process inside -- processes that had had
only the most glancing contact (if any) with Nowlan & Heap's process.

Having had this experience, the US Navy got into the SAE's RCM standard project very quickly
indeed because, as a user, the US Navy wanted to be sure -- to be *sure* -- that when it asked for
RCM, it could predict what the Sam-Hill it was going to get.

Which is how *I* got into the project (on behalf of our US Navy client). To help make a standard that
would help *users* know what they were getting when they asked for "RCM".

I don't know all of the organizations that have formally used the SAE standard so far, of course. I do
know that the US Bureau of Land Management, in the US Department of the Interior, recently used
the SAE standard in an RFP for consulting services. They seem to have been quite pleased to have
access to this tool during their procurement process.

2. What questions does the SAE standard *not* answer?

When I speak to people about the SAE standard -- and as the chairman I have spoken to a lot of
people about it in the last couple of years -- I point out that there are two entirely separate questions
that one must answer when setting out to select a process (and sometimes, by implication, to select a
consultant).

The first question is: "is this process RCM?" This is the question that SAE JA1011 is intended to
answer.

If the answer is "yes", the second question is: "is this (RCM) process cost-effective?" SAE JA1011
does nothing whatsoever to help answer this question.

And it is a serious question. You see, it is possible to use any process either well or poorly. As I put it
in my presentations, you can do RCM smart -- or you can do RCM "stoopid". :-)

It's still RCM. But one way is cost-effective, and the other way isn't.

A number of people here have probably heard some consultants complain about the "vast expense",
and "relatively low return", of SAE-compliant RCM. I worked for one such firm, here in the US. I have
seen presentations by another such American consulting firm. In both cases, the people in the firms
were sincere in their complaints. They based their complaints on their own experience. Why did they
make these complaints?
I'll tell you why. Because they did RCM "stoopid". Their approach was wasteful. They organized and
trained themselves and their clients in such a way that it took them forever to get anything done - -
and then, when it got done, it was sometimes a toss-up whether it would actually be implemented in
the plant.

(The most visible defect was in the training. You don't learn to ride a bike proficiently by reading a
book, or by taking a few days of classroom training. You certainly don't learn to use sophisticated and
complex engineering analytic techniques proficiently that way. Why should anyone expect someone
to be able to learn to do RCM proficiently that way?)

(The next most-visible defect was in the change-management area known as "buy-in". My old firm
generated a lot of "shelfware" in the early 1990s, doing one-man analysis "on behalf of" the client
(saved him a lot of work, didn't it?) whose reports were put on a shelf and forgotten -- because the
people who were responsible for implementing the recommendations saw no reason to make those
changes.)

And then, having taken forever to get things done (if anything really *got* done at all), these
consultants complained about RCM itself. And cast about for ways to "streamline" the process itself --
instead of looking for ways to organize and train themselves better.

Personally, I am persuaded that it is possible to use an SAE JA1011-compliant process in a way that
is cost-effective. It is not easy to come up with such a way (if it were, then everyone would have one!),
but I think that at least one cost-effective SAE JA1011- compliant process does exist. I think that the
US Naval aviation people on my subcommitee would say that at least two such processes exist.

But this is not a given. You don't always find that an SAE JA1011- compliant process is also a cost-
effective process.

Those users who are concerned about the cost-effectiveness of the RCM process they might use
would be well-advised to take the measures they would take when embarking on the use of any other
sort of new process:

Decide what cost-effectiveness metrics are important to you, then check the track record of that
particular process, and see what sort of experience others have had with it.

Learning to use a cost-effective RCM process at your site is not simple, and it is not easy. But was it
simple or easy to build your site in the first place? How many important things are simple and easy?

-- Dana Netherton

My two cents worth :-)

From Terrence O'Hanlon

These debates about RCM and other strategies/methods are very interesting. Peter, Dana and John
are obviously very experienced and well versed in what they do. I appreciate the detailed
explanations as they provide a solid understanding of the foundations for these approaches. I doubt
that these explanations will go very far to convince the "other side" to lay down its arms though!

I think that reports on actual results would be as interesting as the RCM debate if not more so! It
would be even better to hear from field practitioners! Why did LTV file bankruptcy (citing "foreign"
competition) while DoFasco (who must have the same competition) is growing it's profits? Did their
approach to asset management have anything to do with it? What is the "foreign" competition doing to
be so competitive?
How about a New Year resolution to end the RCM debate and start filing this list with stories about the
what is working (and what is not) in the real world! Does anyone else agree?

RCM, RCM2, PMO, TPM, PdM, CBM and PM (now Plant Services Magazine www.plantservices.com
is promoting EMM - Effective Maintenance Management!) all look great on paper.

What is working for you?

Happy New Year!

Terrence O'Hanlon

From Thomas Purackal

I would like to learn what are the differences between RCM,RCM-1&RCM-2.Request the experts like
Mr.Peter,Mr.John and others to write.

Thomas Purackal.

From John Moubray

Thomas

As a very first response to your query, please refer to Aladon's website at

www.thealadonnetwork.com. The first two or three of pages of this website give a brief description of
RCM and RCM2.

If you want to study the original text of the document that first described "Reliability-centered
Maintenance", you need to get hold of a copy of the report entitled "Reliability-centered Maintenance"
by F Stanley Nowlan and Howard Heap from the National Technical Information Service, Springfield,
Virginia, USA.

If you want to study RCM2 in more detail, get hold of a copy of my book entitled "Reliability-centered
Maintenance" (US edition) from www.amazon.com, or "Reliability-centred Maintenance" (UK edition)
from www.amazon.co.uk.

As the correspondence you have been reading indicates, there are great many other processes that
use the term "RCM" currently on the market. Some can legitimately be called RCM. Some cannot.
The SAE Standard JA1011 was developed to help users to determine the difference. To obtain a copy
of the standard, visit the SAE website at www.sae.org, and enter the number "JA1011" into the first
search field that you encounter. This will take you to the page that will enable you to download a copy
of the standard for a sum of US$59. (I have learned that some national standards organisations
charge a lot more for this already expensive document. If you can, I suggest that you try to order it
direct from the SAE.)

John Moubray

From Dana Netherton

Thomas,
Regarding your query, I'll say this:

"RCM", as defined by SAE JA1011, is a 7-step analytic process, based directly on the process
presented in Nowlan & Heap's 1978 US government report.

No specific process bears the name "RCM-1" or "RCM1". However, RCM processes that are derived
directly from Nowlan & Heap's report (such as the two official US Navy RCM processes, one for ships
and the other for aircraft, both written in the early 1980s), might be called "RCM Mark 1".

One way in which Nowlan & Heap differ from SAE JA1011 is that N&H address "safety" as an explicit
issue to be managed, but do not address "the environment" as an explicit issue. In the late 1970s,
who did?

But today, who does not? An SAE standard that did *not* address the environment as an explicit
issue would do its users a grave disservice. So SAE JA1011 requires an RCM process to address the
environment as an explicit issue to be managed.

"RCM-2" or "RCM2" is Aladon's RCM process, first defined in the first edition of John's book in 1991
(about 13 years after the publication of N&H's report). It does address the environment, and has a
number of other enhancements that motivated John to call it "RCM Mark 2", or "RCM2". (The final
chapter of his book has a summary of these enhancements.) RCM2 does comply fully with SAE
JA1011.

RCM2 also has some important features in areas outside the analytic process itself, areas not
addressed by SAE JA1011. You may recall that I mentioned, in my earlier post, that a number of
consultants tried to apply RCM, and failed to get results that were worth the cost of the effort. You
may recall that I said that the roots of the problem generally lay in the way they organized and trained
people (client people and their own people). And that I said that these consultants failed to address
those issues, but instead tinkered with the analytic process itself.

RCM2 adds specific ways of organizing and training people so that they are most likely to apply the
RCM process successfully. I'm not going to go into those things here -- see John's book for an
introductory discussion of them; if you find that you want details, I'm sure that John or I can refer you
to people who can give them in a better forum than via e-mail. But in my view these points are the
most important features that differentiate RCM2 from the other SAE- compliant processes out there.

Back to Jim, and perhaps others,

In case any independent comment is needed about John's book, I'll make it, and gladly. I have read
all of the books titled "Reliability- Centered Maintenance", and IMNSHO John's book is the best,
hands down. Nowlan & Heap's report is just that, a report. It's groundbreaking and gives mind-
bogglingly important background information about the development of RCM, but it doesn't try to
*teach* RCM. John's book is a textbook. And a much better one than the other books rattling around
the bookstore shelves, IMNSHO.

As to your suggestion, well thanks! I appreciate the compliment! Frankly, though, I don't feel a need to
write a book of my own, given that John's book is already out there.

Again, in the interests of fair play, I will remind folks here that my firm is a member of the Aladon
Network. This means that I have signed a license agreement with John's company to use his training
materials, including his book (as a textbook). I did that specifically so that I *could* get access to
them. I chose to go in that direction because I've seen the training materials out there and I think that
John's (Aladon's) are the best.

Futher, in the interests of fair play, those who have seen the most recent edition of John's book (2.3),
will know that John has obtained my permission to use portions of my magazine article (portions that
talked about the history of RCM) in this edition of his book. I received no financial compensation for
giving that permission, just a word of thanks in the acknowledgments. :-)
And, again, I have no commercial interest in Australia, NZ, or elsewhere outside North America, so
whether the Aussies, Kiwis, or Brits agree with me makes no commercial difference to me. :-)

Oh, and do note that John said, "get hold of a copy", not "buy a copy". If Kim has a friend or colleague
who has a copy, I'm sure John would be happy to see Kim borrow it (so long as Kim reads it!).

Dana Netherton

From Steve Turner

Hi folks,

I am away with my family on camping holidays at the moment so this means a few things:

1) I don't have all my reference material with me,

2) My internet access is a bit hit and miss.

I would however like to respond to the messages that have been circulating regarding maintenance
analysis (RCM / PMO etc). I feel that there are a number of crucial issues being discussed here and
am pleased that Dana Netherton and John Moubray have joined the discussion.

Secondly, I agree with Terrence OHanlon that some good case material would be useful. I have
provided one case study which demonstrates the flexibility and speed of PM Optimisation.

The next point is that I agree whole heartedly with Dana, that setting standards for RCM is essential.
My background and experiences are very similar to his. I abhor companies that sell RCM with little
understanding of concepts and a process which does not conform to the Standard or Nolan and Heap
work. I have long been on this bandwagon.

The final introductory point is that I do not agree with John Moubray's numbers on success rates of
implementation programs or the distribution of failure modes into hidden failures, and hazards. The
number of hidden failures that receive no maintenance at all (stated as 25%) may be true but we find
that about this number of hidden failures are essentially redundant due to the massive over protection
of some designs. On the contrary, we often work through the maintenance program and find that
there is no technically feasible task to prevent a failure with hazardous consequences and protection
is proposed as modification.

Rather than go through each of the questions raised regarding PMO, I will explain where we believe it
fits in. Most of the questions that are being raised are perhaps because people are thinking that we
are presenting PMO as a direct replacement for RCM in every application. This we are not. We see
PMO as a tool for certain situations and RCM a tool for others. We also embrace Hazard Analysis,
Root Cause Analysis and a whole range of tools designed for specific purposes. Our position is that
organisations should understand what problems they have and then deploy the appropriate tool. If the
plant has a hazard problem, then do hazard analysis. If there are a lot of contributing factors
associated with plant failures, use root cause analysis. Using a tool that is wrong for the application is,
as I say, cause for redesign under the RCM theory.

Where does PMO fit.

PM Optimisation (our registered version is PMO2000) is a tool for the review of existing maintenance
programs. It does not conform to SAE JA1011 and we have never promoted it as such. Never have
we called it RCM either. We do however say that it uses RCM task decision logic which is to say that
once a failure mode is established we apply decision logic very similar to that of RCM II.

We have deliberately branded PMO 2000 completely different to RCM for three reasons:

1) To avoid the type of disservice done to buyers of RCM as pointed out by Dana.
2) To clearly set aside ourselves from RCM. PMO2000 is a different approach to RCM therefore it that
can be used for needs where RCM is not appropriate.

3) We believe that there is a need to provide branding to clearly identify our methodology, training,
software and facilitative support and our expanding group of licensees.

Why are there different needs for maintenance analysis?

In my mind, there are at least three distinct phases of asset life; one is the design, another is its
operation and another is disposal. The maintenance analysis tools required for design and operation
need to be quite different if they are to be successful in each situation. The reason is simple:- in the
design phase there may be little experience with the equipment and one should start from first
principles. In mature plant, the maintenance and operations folk have created their own maintenance
routines (formal or informal) and there is failure history (often in human memory) which adds valuable
insight into failure modes and characteristics.

To put things into perspective, the series of MSG methods have always been directed at defining the
initial maintenance requirements for aircraft prior to them entering service. All the various aviation
regulatory bodies require this analysis to be performed prior to them getting what is known as "type
certification". RCM is based on MSG and has the same characteristics and functionality. Despite John
Moubray's objection I say it is a tool to define the initial maintenance requirements and used prior to
commissioning in aviation (the industry for which it was developed) therefore it is primarily a design
tool.

Evolution of PMO

My experience with RCM and PMO commenced in 1984 as I was the engineering authority required
to sign off the maintenance review conducted on the RAAF's Falcon 20 (Mystere) VIP aircraft (there
were only three). The RAAF had developed its own approach to MSG and it was called RAAF
Analytical Maintenance Program (RAMP). This was again a zero based analysis tool based on MSG
etc. RAMP was used on most of the RAAF's fleet.

With the Falcon 20, there was a reluctance to perform the full RAMP due to the cost of such analysis
compared with uncertain benefits when the continued ownership of these assets was always
questionable. It was decided by the engineering chiefs to use an approach similar to that which we
now call PM Optimisation. Guess what happened.... We completed the analysis very quickly and the
results were excellent. We will never know how the outputs would have compared had we used the
full RAMP analysis. However, what I do know is that the analysis was coordinated by one person who
analysed data and asked the right people the right questions. It was completed in less than one year
whereas the full RAMP on each aircraft was completed by teams of people and took years to
complete each aircraft.

In 1994 I began work as an RCM II consultant, worked on a number of RCM assignments and trained
hundreds of people. I had a poor success rate considering the large number of people trained. I had
considerable difficulty in getting companies to invest in a pilot program. I met with senior company
representatives often and I soon became aware that the process that was required was not a zero
based analysis, but a rationalisation or review process. In 1995, I resigned from the consulting
company with which I worked and began applying PM Optimisation in my own business, OMCS.
Since that point, our PMO approach has never had a failure. All nine pilot programs are either
complete or still going with the exception of one plant which is due for closure this year.

This is a dramatic change from my experiences as an RCM consultant and I don't attribute my
changes of fortune to any other factor than using a different approach.

The PMO process has proven itself as a valuable business tool and can not be ignored as a
legitimate process of evaluation for plants that have existing maintenance programs. It is not the best
tool in every circumstance and we do not use PMO where it is likely to produce a sub optimal result.
One Case Study:

Imagine you are the maintenance engineer responsible for a gas field comprising seventy engine
compressor sets, fifty of which are identical in configuration, but different in functionality and failure
consequence. The reliability has been improved by better tuning and via engineering fixes, but uptime
is struggling at 92% when some users are getting 98% out of similar plant in similar circumstances.
The production and maintenance departments have also been "right sized" using the world's best
plants as a benchmark... get the picture... insufficient resources.

What do you do.

What this company did was train up some people in PMO and run a four day workshop. In four days
the following outcomes were delivered:

Spark plug failure was found to be a significant cause and the 4 monthly change out was reduced to 3
months as trials were done on longer life platinum spark plugs - purchasing were buying the cheapest
ones bless their socks. Services are now back to 4 months with the new plugs and the new target is
six months in some cases.

Six monthly instrument service (two days downtime) was excessive and duplicated the daily routines
of the operator in many cases. The one task that was necessary was a probe clean task which
actually needed to be done more frequently. The six monthly instrument service was moved to annual
and the necessary clean task given to the mechanical fitter on a three monthly cycle.

Numerous other tasks were added and deleted to the operator's rounds and the mechanical list and
the use of thermography was formally introduced to better manage valve condition. The oil analysis
program which had been a hit or miss affair was set into a formal and well managed program which
has since lead to the realisation that the greatest cause of oil deterioration has been increased nitride
concentration caused by people not knowing where to set the fuel air ratio.

Implementation took some time but the result was over $4M in additional gas within six months (up to
94% uptime at last count), saving of one man year of instrument trade (in a section of three or four
people) and a mechanical workshop that slept at night because sparkplug failure was no longer
causing engines to backfire and shut down.

Question.. how long would an RCM analysis according to the Standard have taken where the
functions and consequences of each compressor is different and the potential failure modes probably
numbers in the several hundreds. I would suggest to do one set properly would have taken months
and the result would have been of little difference. To stick to the RCM II process would require a zero
based analysis of all compressors would it not?

Case Study 2

Same plant but in the CO2 removal trains. Seven similar assets in parallel built over 30 years. Uptime
at 89% and dropping. Six monthly shutdown on all trains primarily to inspect Non Return Valves
(NRV's) in the system which holds back 700 atmospheres of pressure when the trains trip. The NRV
inspection takes 12 hours. During this time several other inspections / critical function checks and
calibrations are attempted during that interval.

The operator rounds consist of over 100 readings to be taken every six hours. This takes second
priority to isolations and controlling work permits so guess how much of this is actually done.

Demand for gas is increasing and in the previous year, major gas fired plants in Adelaide and
Melbourne had to be taken off line due to supply shortages.

Workshop #1 NRV's
Found all NRV's except one could be inspected off line. The group proposed to change the policy of
the one valve that required off line inspection from inspection to replace on an annual basis. The also
proposed to set up accurate wear measurement on all other valves to potentially put all valves on
scheduled refurbishment policy.

Analysis Time taken - three days mostly in consultation with engineers and manufacturers and trying
to make sense of dodgy failure history.

Savings almost $800,000 in gas. But also an excellent example of why the accountants should not be
reducing maintenance budgets. Replacement is more expensive on the maintenance budget.

Workshop #2 Operator tasks.

Deleted about 30% the tasks on the basis of the reading being set to gauges alarms and trips in the
control room or the data having no significance. Set the remaining tasks to appropriate intervals of 6
hours, 12 hours 24 hours etc.

Proposed a modification to install pumps that are capable of removing sand, bolts etc from the four
sumps on site rather than operators spending four hours per day cleaning them. (1200 manhours per
year). Average life of original pumps around 7 weeks with average overhaul cost of 30 manhours.
This was also a significant saving in mechanical labour and parts costs.

Deleted nearly all the data gathering and put placards on equipment where limits were important.
Operators act only on deviations.

Workshop took 4 days with operator mech and instr tech.

Result is that Operators now complete their rounds (as you may expect, previously rounds used to be
very ad hoc) and no trades need to inspections. Plant ownership spiraled upwards as did morale as
operators were no longer required to do stupid things.

It is difficult to see how an RCM tool could be used in this fashion as the operator tasks covered the
whole CO2 plant and affected a very large number of functions.

Workshop #3 Fan Maintenance

Seven sets of 16 very large fans being subject to visual checks by operators and an out of control
lubrication schedule. Six monthly mechanical and annual electrical PMs... you can guess what was on
these rounds.

Investigation found a $200,000 pa cost in gearbox overhaul pa alone.

Four days later we had the following recommendations;

The operators wanted to take on responsibility for vibration analysis as it was established that waiting
for the gearbox to become noisy was too late as this was overhaul territory ($14,000). Picking up the
problem as the bearings were starting to fail($500) using VA was the only way and they were the only
ones that had the time to do it (now that their workload on rounds and sump cleaning was being
reduced).

Introduce a well managed lubrication round.

Eliminate all mechanical inspections and ensure that alignment is done properly.

Collect data on cone ring coupling failures to establish economic life.

Other analysis

Over the period of 18 months we ran several other workshops in the CO2 trains with the total analysis
time adding up to no more than 50 days. The whole of the CO2 train area is now complete. For some
of the changes (particularly to the testing of trip and shutdown devices) a very rigorous analysis was
performed and the proposals sent to senior engineers and later to the insurers for acceptance. There
were no shortcuts which left the company at risk whatsoever. If anything, the risk profile has
significantly improved due to various mods and changes from dubious on condition to hard time
maintenance (NRVs etc).

During the year PMO commenced gas production increased by $20 M and a further $15 M in the
second year. Last winter OEE was over 98% every month (cf 89% and falling) with some months
reaching over 99%. This year maintenance expenditure was under budget by $1.8M My company
(OMCS) assisted the client over the two year period with training (over 100 people trained) facilitation
and project direction. The biggest difficulty with the assignment was implementation as we had a four
by two week roster system to contend with and as you could see, many of the changes were quite
dramatic culturally.

Conclusion

This case study illustrates the flexibility of the PMO process and how it can be used effectively in
organisations who already have a maintenance program in place. We could not see any RCM
process as being as efficient and effective at meeting the clients needs of both production and safe
operations.

For those that are interested, the reliability group manager from this company is presenting a paper
on their experience at the Mainstream 2001 conference in Sydney (March from memory). I am
hesitant to say this for fear that all the RCM consultants will turn up and run a scare campaign and
attempt to discredit both the process and the result. I hope that we can all be mature about this and
not treat new approaches like they did witches some centuries ago.

Closing Statements

Both John Moubray and Ron Doucet have shared with us some fantastic case studies showing how
RCM II can achieve exceptional results (I have experienced a few RCM II successes myself). In my
mind each of these cases revolved around improved management of existing failures (this is
intuitively obvious). For this reason I can state that the use of PMO 2000 would have created the
same outcomes. The important point is that PMO 2000 would have done so with significantly less
analysis effort and in a much shorter time scale. The documentation would have been as good or
better depending on how you see things. This means that all of these projects have opportunity costs
attached to them through delaying the benefits of the work and losing the ability to deploy the analysis
resources on other valuable projects.

Gents, we have spent four years developing our process, software, training material and experience.
We have never had a pilot program that has stopped. All our clients are moving as quickly as they can
with the biggest barrier to advancement being the time it takes to implement. Many of our users are
ex RCM users and are now PMO converts.

The big difference between RCM and PMO is the speed and flexibility of the PMO approach and the
fact it is an approach designed to meet the needs of clients with existing plant. As far as success as a
change management tool for mature plants, PMO is streets ahead of RCM as the people involved
know that they are not having to reinvent the wheel from scratch. They know that they are using the
very good wheel that they have already developed but as a team, making it work better with little fuss
but a strong structure of analytical method and documentation.

Where to now?
When I get back off holidays I should put together a paper addressing all the important issues raised
in more detail. At the moment it seems that there is a major scare campaign in progress which I
believe is not justified. Keep the questions coming and I will respond to them in my paper.

I agree with John's suggestion that people who are interested in evaluating both processes should do
so by running a comparative trial on similar equipment on their site.

For those that have not done so and are interested, there is a paper available on the website
www.pmoptimisation.com.au under downloads. Choose the paper for mature plants.

Thank you for your patience and I sincerely hope this is a rational explanation of the "other side of the
world" from the other side of the world.

Best regards.

Steve Turner

From Peter Reed

Steve:

All this and you are on Hols........ Geez mate - get a life - pack away the laptop and spend some time
with the kids etc. I am just packing up our gear to do a bit of outdoorsy stuff and you can rest assured
the PC will NOT be part of the packed gear (it would not be worth my life for the better half to find this
sort of stuff in the tent).

BUT - I do believe that this could be the best debate yet and seeing the 'Big Guns' slogging it out over
can only help the rest of us as long the debate remains clinical and we do not allow personalities to
creep in. I have a heap of respect for all the people on this list, no matter what they do for a living, and
would hate to see any personality clashes inhibiting an otherwise open forum.

Well peoples, I hear the bush (and fish) calling so its by for now.

Peter R

From Sandy Dunn

John, Dana

Thanks for joining into the debate - we welcome your contributions.

There are a couple of points in response to earlier notes from Steve, John and Dana that I would like
to comment on. I know that, in the past, many on the list find this discussion to be somewhat
irrelevant to them (we have already terminated one earlier discussion on this topic by mutual consent,
due to requests from the list membership). For those that are not interested in this thread - hit the
delete key now!

I am aware that this forum is not intended to be used as a vehicle for selling and/or pushing
commercial interests. I have tried to comply with this spirit, although it is difficult when discussing
alternative, commercially available approaches. If any feel that I (or anyone else on this list) has
overstepped the mark in this regard, please feel free to say so.
Steve said....

"I agree whole heartedly with Dana, that setting standards for RCM is essential."

I say...

I agree that the development of SAE JA1011 will greatly assist in clearly separating which techniques
are RCM, and which are not. The standard has clearly defined RCM to be based strictly on Nowlan
and Heap, whose work was developed primarily for use in the airline industry (and subsequently
adapted for the US Department of Defence). If we accept this definition for what it is, the debate can
then move on from whether "Technique A/B/C is or is not RCM" to answer the question of whether
RCM is, or is not, an appropriate process to be used in industry in general, and if so, under what
circumstances. As Dana wrote, this is specifically NOT covered in the Standard.

Dana said...

So far, every comment I have seen from a user [of the SAE standard] has ranged from favorable to
devoutely grateful.

I say...

Unfortunately, my experience, when discussing the SAE Standard with users, has been that their
reaction is mainly one of disinterest or apathy.

John said...

"take special note of the views of the one commentator who is a practising maintenance manager and
hence who does not have a commercial axe to grind, but who feels strongly enough about all this stuff
- based on personal experience - to share his thoughts at length (Ron Doucet of the Iron Ore
Company of Canada)"

I say....

I agree wholeheartedly. I would like to hear more of the experiences (successful or otherwise) of
those that have trialled/implemented an RCM/PM Optimisation or equivalent approach. The fact that,
of the several hundred participants in this list, only one non-consultant has any significant benefits to
report seems to me to indicate that either RCM is not, perhaps, the panacea that many consultants
make it out to be, or that very few have actually undertaken any form of structured PM
review/development - or am I mistaken?

John said....

"Sandy Dunn states that "I have recently come to the conclusion that, in contrast to the position that is
put forward by John Moubray, Ron Doucet and others from the RCM II religion, the major problem is
that RCM II (and by definition RCM) has NOT been sufficiently adapted to meet the needs of industry
outside the airline industry."

Firstly, as discussed in section 2 above, RCM is not used by the airline industry. Secondly, as
discussed in section 3 above, the SAE RCM Standard (not RCM II) defines what RCM is."

I say....

I think you have misunderstood the point that I was trying to make. Ron Doucet, in an earlier note
stated that "RCM II was the attempt at industralizing the process such that it could be applicable to
any industry not only aviation", and I have heard you make similar statements yourself on previous
occasions. My point is that, while RCM attempts to deal effectively with risk at a micro (PM task) level,
particularly with regard to failure finding tasks, it completely fails to do this at a macro level (ie., what
are the potential business, safety, environmental etc. impacts of failure of this plant/system/process),
and therefore with what level of rigour (if any) should I, as a manager, assess my PM program on this
plant/system/process. To state, as you do, that you are coming to the conclusion that all plant items
should be assessed using a rigorous RCM process fails to acknowledge the real situation of most
maintenance managers today, who are being required to perform minor miracles on a daily basis, with
almost no resources (money or people) with which to do it. When resources are scarce (ie always!) it
is a managers job to ensure that he obtains the greatest possible return for his investment. With
regard to RCM/PM Optimisation, he/she needs to adopt an approach that is flexible enough to allow a
highly rigorous approach, where this is required, and a less rigorous approach when a great degree of
rigour cannot be justified. I should also point out that, in the absence of any form of macro risk
assessment, discussion quickly degenerates into verbal blows and circular arguments between the
scare-mongers (you know who you are :-)!), and the "she'll be right"-ers.

John said...

"It is true to say that the application of RCM has not been successful in every case. It can be said to
have failed in about one third of the orgainsations where it has been tried.

....a great many other RCM practitioners have been active in Australia for the past ten years, and their
collective experience is that about two thirds of the applications of RCM to date have progressed well
beyond the pilot stage (not 1 in 10)."

I say....

I strongly dispute your figures - at least in Australia. "A great many" RCM practitioners that have been
active in Australia is actually 11 (give or take a couple), and I know them all personally, as they are all
former colleagues of mine. In fact, about three or four years ago, all key practitioners got together in
Sydney to discuss "whither RCM II", and all had the same experience - strong initial interest, a pilot
study that showed great results, and then limited further implementation. I don't have the exact figures
(and clearly you do) but, while an RCM II practitioner, I organised two (and I believe, so far the only
two) Australasian RCM II users' conferences. In attempting to round up potential speakers, it was
easy to find those who were more than happy to talk about the success that they had had with their
pilot projects, but much harder to find any organisations that had implemented on a wider scale. I can
only think of 6 organisations (in the 8 years that I was associated with RCM II), that had conducted
RCM on more than two or three systems - and two of these were my clients. At three of the
organisations that I am currently familiar with, RCM is no longer part of their maintenance
improvement program or philosophy - I have not recently been in contact with the other three, and
am, therefore, not in a position to judge their current status.

John said......

"...there is in fact a high correlation between the success rate of RCM II applications and the change
management capabilities of the consultants involved. (Among others, the British Royal Navy, which is
a major user of SAE-compliant RCM, has come to understand that the capabilities of individual
consultants are every bit as important as the track record of their employers. So much so that the RN
now insists on interviewing at great length every RCM consultant that is to be placed at their disposal,
in addition to verifying the commercial bona fides of their employers.)"

I say...

This indicates to me, the major drawback of RCM, and the reason that so few organisations
implement RCM on a wide scale, despite the fact that the initial pilot studies show excellent results (at
one of my RCM II pilot projects, expected benefits of $10m pa were estimated, mainly consisting of
improved production output, and reduced reagent usage. The cost of this pilot study was
approximately $40,000, and when anonymously surveyed, 100% of team members felt the process to
be beneficial, and wanted to be involved in future analyses - but despite this, the client has not (in the
5 years since the pilot study) ever conducted another RCM study)
RCM is, as a result of its rigid approach, so resource-intensive and so demanding of management
attention, that it requires a MAJOR change management effort for it to succeed. If only a highly
talented few consultants are good enough to be successful at implementing RCM, then what hope is
there that the program will be sustained when the consultants leave? Great for consulting fees - not
so good for clients!

John said...

"retroactive approaches are particularly weak on specifying appropriate maintenance for protective
devices"

I say...

PMO2000 allows the flexibility of identifying functions for protective devices which are critical to the
integrity of the production process, or for ongoing safety or environmental concerns. In fact, I have
just completed a PMO2000 review for one client on their one (and only) steam boiler, which is critical
for the entire production process. One of the major outcomes of the review was the fact that it took
several days, (and talking to dozens of people) to obtain a list of all the trips and alarms in place on
the boiler. In the end, it was supplied by the Plant Operations Supervisor - maintenance personnel,
and many Production operators, did not even know it existed. There was clearly a complete lack of
focus on protection - which has now been rectified. Incidentally, the review also identified 53 current
PM tasks which were to be deleted - mainly duplication of tasks by different people using different
techniques at different times. For example, bearings were monitored for vibration using the human
senses by three different groups of people - Production Operators, Mechanical tradespeople, and
Electrical tradespeople. In addition, Condition Monitoring contractors monitored the bearings using
Vibration Analysis techniques. And to top it all off, the bearings were replaced every three years,
regardless of condition - even on equipment that had installed spares!

Steve said....

"PS I did note an unnecessary and misguided slur on Sandy Dunn's ability on one piece of
correspondence. I hope that this is not going to be the tone of future discussion."

I say...

Thanks for your concern, Steve, but I think the original comment reflects more on the person that
made it, than on me. In Australia, we have a saying "play the ball, not the man", and that is what I
intend to continue to do.

....

Enough consultant-speak. If you got this far, let us know what your experiences have been - non-
consultant reponses particularly welcome.

Alexander (Sandy) Dunn

From Dana Netherton

Hi, Sandy. Thanks for the welcome. :-) I have a couple of very brief things to mention, below.

On 4 Jan 2001, at 22:32, Alexander (Sandy) Dunn wrote:

Steve said....
"I agree whole heartedly with Dana, that setting standards for RCM is essential."
I say...

I agree that the development of SAE JA1011 will greatly assist in clearly separating which techniques
are RCM, and which are not. If we accept this definition for what it is, the debate can then move on
from whether "Technique A/B/C is or is not RCM" to answer the question of whether RCM is, or is not,
an appropriate process to be used in industry in general, and if so, under what circumstances. As
Dana wrote, this is specifically NOT covered in the Standard.

As the chair of the committee that wrote the Standard, I am very pleased to find that the Standard is
doing what we intended it to do: it is helping us clarify our discussions by helping us be clear about
what we mean by terms such as "RCM". I am glad that you and Steve (and the others here, it looks
like) are content to accept the standard and, as you say, allow the debate to move on.

Dana said...

So far, every comment I have seen from a user [of the SAE standard] has ranged from favorable to
devoutely grateful.

I say...

Unfortunately, my experience, when discussing the SAE Standard with users, has been that their
reaction is mainly one of disinterest or apathy.

No doubt this reflects the different people we have encountered. Most of the people I have
encountered are people who came to my sessions at conferences, wanting to find out what this
Standard might be. Once they did, their comments "ranged from favorable to devoutly grateful."

Of course, I have also had a *lack* of comment from people who *might* use the standard: people
who are not using RCM now, and in fact who are barely able to spell "RCM" consistently three times
in a row (such as potential clients). These people don't know enough about the issues to care about
the Standard. They are indeed apathetic about it, but IMHO understandably so.

However, I don't view these people as users of the Standard -- they aren't using it! And I haven't
received comments from them -- they don't know enough to volunteer them! The comments I *have*
received from people who *are* using RCM (or who know enough about RCM to be ready to use it)
have been such as I described. :-)

In any case, my point remains: so far, the only *negative* comments I have seen about the content of
the Standard have come from consultants. Which makes me especially pleased that the consultants
on this mailing list seem to have accepted the content of the Standard. :-)

Oh, and I agree fully that the best tone to take in this discussion is a professional tone, looking at the
profession -- not at the professionals. It is very easy to get overheated in e-mail exchanges. Those
who are listening-in will be best served if we can shed light, not heat.

(Though we Americans who have been "enjoying" winter temperatures of -10C and below, lately --
with wind chills in the range of -20C or worse -- would be glad to get some heat! :-) )

Yours,

Dana Netherton

From John Moubray

Sandy, Steve
There are one or two points in this discussion where we appear to have fundamentally different
information at our disposal, particularly concerning the ongoing use of RCM2 in Australia. If anyone
wants to find out more about where RCM2 has been and is still being used in Australia, they might
like to get in touch with Stephen Young of the Asset Partnership:
stephen.young@assetpartnership.com.

However, I would like to respond to one or two other points, as follows:

Firstly, Sandy says: "My point is that, while RCM attempts to deal effectively with risk at a micro (PM
task) level, particularly with regard to failure finding tasks, it completely fails to do this at a macro level
(ie., what are the potential business, safety, environmental etc. impacts of failure of this
plant/system/process), and therefore with what level of rigour (if any) should I, as a manager, assess
my PM program on this plant/system/process."

RCM deals directly with risk at the macro (business) level. In fact as explained on pages 28 - 35 of the
second edition of my book, the whole RCM process starts with a detailed examination of the operating
context of the system under review, if necessary up to and including the mission statement of the
company, in order to ensure that the people performing the analysis have a crystal clear
understanding of how failures of the system under review can affect the business process of which it
forms part. Furthermore, Appendix 3 (page 344 in particular) shows how the RCM process can make
direct use of corporate risk standards on a quantitative basis (if such standards exist).

Sandy goes on to say: "To state, as you (JM) do, that you are coming to the conclusion that all plant
items should be assessed using a rigorous RCM process fails to acknowledge the real situation of
most maintenance managers today, who are being required to perform minor miracles on a daily
basis, with almost no resources (money or people) with which to do it. When resources are scarce (ie
always!) it is a managers job to ensure that he obtains the greatest possible return for his investment."

Firstly, I mentioned in my original contribution that if RCM is correctly applied by properly trained
people working under the direction of a skilled facilitator, and the project has been properly planned
before it starts, it usually pays for itself in between two weeks and two months. (In some cases, the
payback period has been measured in days and sometimes one or two years, but the norm is weeks
to months.) Most managers in my experience would regard this as a more than adequate return on
investment.

Secondly, one of the biggest problems in the world of physical asset management today is that
maintenance managers "are being required to perform minor miracles on a daily basis, with almost no
resources (money or people) with which to do it". The disasters mentioned in my earlier e-mails are
one result of "too few resources". A far more significant result is the truly vicious legislative
developments (in which Australia is taking the lead) that were mentioned by Ron Doucet, Stephen
Young and myself. These are now proposing jail sentences not only for individual managers who
might be found to be at fault, but for whole teams of people.

These issues are so serious that I believe it is worth repeating two sets of statements made in my
initial e-mail: "The message to us all is that society is getting so sick of industrial accidents with
serious consequences that not only is it seeking to call individuals as well as corporations to account,
but (in the case of the Victoria Evidence Act) that it is prepared to alter well-established principles of
jurisprudence to do so. Under these circumstances, everyone involved in the management of physical
assets needs to take greater care than ever to ensure that every step they take in executing their
official duties is beyond reproach. It is becoming professionally suicidal to do otherwise" and
"However, a rather more serious point needs to be borne in mind when considering these techniques.
The very word 'streamline' suggests that something is being omitted. (For instance, Steve Turner
states that PMO usually omits the function identification step, and that as a result, it only identifies half
of the reasonably likely failure modes that would be identified using even 'Classical' RCM.) In other
words, there is to a greater or lesser extent a degree of sub-optimisation embodied in all of these
techniques. Leaving things out inevitably increases risk. More specifically, it increases the probability
that an unanticipated failure, possibly one with very serious consequences, could occur. If this does
happen, as suggested above, managers of the organisation involved are increasingly likely to find
themselves called personally to account. If the worst comes to the worst, they will not only have to
explain, often in an emotionally-charged courtroom confronted by bitterly hostile legal Rottweilers,
what went wrong and why. They will also have to explain why they deliberately chose a sub-optimal
decision-making process to establish their asset management strategies in the first place, rather than
using one which complies fully with a Standard set by an internationally-recognised standards-setting
organisation. It would not be me that they would have to convince, not their peers and not their
managers, but a judge and jury."

Under these circumstances, it is not going to be an acceptable defence to say that I did what I did
because my boss told me to, or because I was not given sufficient resources to do it properly.

In essence, I believe that the legal environment in which maintenance managers are operating
throughout the developed world, and especially in Australia, is now such that the time has come for
maintenance managers to start pushing back and demanding the resources needed to do a proper
job. I know that this is much, much easier said than done, but the stakes have simply become too
high to do otherwise.

For those who you who have not already made up your minds on this subject, Steve and I seem to be
in complete agreement in suggesting that the best way for you to do so would be to try them both on a
pilot scale, preferably on the same type of equipment. Look at the outcomes in terms of documented
maintenance programs (with a special eye on defensibility) and in terms of benefits achieved related
to costs. Then decide.

John Moubray.

From Mick Drew

"RCM2 does comply fully with SAE JA1011."

WHILST I HAVE READ AND UNDERSTAND THE INTENT OF THE SAE JA1011STANDARD, IT
WORRIES ME THAT THE CHAIRMAN OF THE SUBCOMMITTE MAKES THIS DECREE AS IT
SMELLS OF AN ENDORSEMENT OF RCM2 PROCESS BY THE COMMITTEE.

I understood the standards was written for Users to evaluate a supplier of RCM services. When
supplier start quoting that they comply with the standard- on what premise do we judge their claims?

From Dana Netherton

Sorry if I gave that impression. I speak neither for the SAE, nor for the other members of the RCM
subcommittee. That statement expressed my judgement, no one else's.

I understood the standards was written for Users to evaluate a supplier of RCM services. When
supplier start quoting that they comply with the standard- on what premise do we judge their claims?

Is this the first time you have ever heard a supplier state that their product or service meets a certain
standard? (rhetorical question, needs no answer)

As it happens, I'm sincere about what I said, but of course that doesn't mean that my judgement is
right. If a user feels that it's likely I'm mistaken ... then they should check for themselves. Or get a
second opinion from someone who knows RCM well.

Just the usual process, on both sides of the table.

Dana Netherton

From: Robert C. Baldwin

Maintenance Technology magazine published a two-part article by Dana Netherton on SAE JA1011
"Evaluation Criteria for Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM) Processes" a short time before its
adoption. Both parts are online at www.mt-online.com/current/08-99mm.html an www.mt-
online.com/current/06-99mm.html.

Another article, "Is Streamlined RCM Worth the Risk?" by John Moubray, is scheduled for publication
in Maintenance Technology later this month.

Regards,

Bob

From Peter Ball

Hello Mick Drew ,

Just to add to the RCM confusion, we now appear to have PMO confusion. Enter ERIN Engineering
with their PMO methodology using PMO Workstation software. I wonder how it compares with Fractal
Solutions' PMO software Premo-Expert. Come in Steve, Sandy, David, others.

Whoops!

Peter B.

From Steve Turner

Hi Folks

I wonder why I need to be asked about other products and companies performing PMO as I would
expect that you should contact them. However, I will tell you a little what I know and where to find
more information. Premo Xperts is a software package (and methodology) used for PM Optimisation.
It originates in from the North American Nuclear Power Industry. It has been tried in Australia at four
sites. One of them continues to use it. PMO 2000 has been developed in a response to what we
perceived as deficiencies with that approach.

You can visit the web site for Premo Xperts at www.fractalsoln.com for more information.

I have heard of the ERIN engineering approach but know little of it. I have seen their site and the
extent of what I know is what you can find out off this site yourselves.

Still confused as to why I should become the spokesperson for other companies.

Regards

Steve
From Terrence O'Hanlon

I am far from being an expert however my understanding is that Planned Maintenance Optimization
(PMO) may have cost and speed of implementation advantages for plants that already have a PM
program and need to increase its effectiveness.

I do not see that there is a debate between PMO and RCM as each seem to have situations for which
they are best suited. In most plants, any program that would increase reliability and maintenance
effectiveness would be a huge improvement over the status quo!

It is similar to a debate about which is best, Vanilla ice cream or Chocolate? (NO replies from ice
cream consultants please!).

I would still like to see more input about what is effective from the "real world" practitioners.

Best regards,

Terrence O'Hanlon

From Mick Drew

Nothing sinister in terms of angles from my part, but your previous notes on the genesis of PMO
referred to experiences in the nuclear industry and referances to "numerous successful plants in the
US", therefore I was confused about whether these referred to PMO or Premo Expert system from
Fractal solutions.

"We believe that there is a need to provide branding to clearly identify our methodology, training,
software and facilitative support and our expanding group of licensees." Steve Turner Jan 4 2001.

Your reply now clarifies the genesis of PMO -" PMO 2000 has been developed in a response to what
we perceived as deficiencies with that approach (sic Premo Expert)."-Steve Turner Jan 8 2001. and
you are now licensing others to apply PMO.

Thank you for the clarification, but I am still confused as to how the success in numerous plants in the
US has anything to do with PMO 2000.

From Steve Turner

Hi Mick,

The reference to the US Nuclear plants I have used to compare the speed of analysis of PMO with
RCM in mature plants. I have used the term PMO in a generic manner. The gist of the argument is
that PMO is six times faster than RCM. The other point that I use the US Nuclear power industry for a
reference is that the US Regulators wrote that the PMO program was a significant benefit which
means to us that PMO is a legitimate process.

PMO2000 is has several differences to Premo Xperts (at least it did when I last saw the PX program).
Using Premo Xperts functional analysis and functional failure analysis is mandatory whereas with
PMO2000 these are optional. To complete a single task analysis in Premo Xperts can mean routing
through 14 screens and this requires users to be quite computer literate. Using PMO2000, all the
analysis is done on one screen and the tool is designed so that anyone in the organisation can go into
the system and make a recommendation to change or add PMs. The approach is clearly focussed on
empowering the workforce to make suggestions to improve the PM program. This analysis then goes
through a secured process of approval and implementation. An audit trail is kept of every change.

There are numerous other differences however, the one that also should be noted is that PMO2000
can be used to build hierarchical schedules, ie one task can go on many schedules such as weekly,
monthly, three monthly etc. Once ready for implementation, each of these schedules is automatically
merged into word documents that users can create templates for and that can be hyper linked to most
CMMS's. This reduces the administrative effort in changeling schedules inside of the CMMS and also
allows for great flexibility. Premo Xpert has been designed to electronically interface with various
CMMS however, we have never been able to achieve this in Australia. All users have had to rekey the
outputs from Premo Xperts.

We have been asked by several local PMO users to electronically interface PMO2000 with some
CMMS's and we have held positive discussions with some vendors.

Hope this helps to clarify the differences.

Regards

Steve

From Peter Reed

Terrance and Co:

I have been reading the latest series of Tomes with considerable interest and it has been this debate
which has cleared my mind a little. I have been of the belief that I have been bashing head against a
wall, preaching the need to carry out some analysis of our current PM system. Whether this be RCM
or any other system analysis now seems moot when looked in the cold hard light of day.

When I read 'most' of Mr Mowbreys two part mini-book, my main thought was "where are the catalysts
in these examples?". What was it that drove these companies to take on the RCM expenditure and
discipline? Somehow I cannot imagine a Company Board sitting around with their cheque - books
thinking "What can we spend some money on this week?". There must have been some real need
that would make these companies scream for help and this need must have been great indeed (&
obvious) if the savings were this easily measured and evident. When this is taken in context we then
see that, in my mind, there must be a lot of companies who waste a lot of hard earned cash on the
principle that this (or any other) system saved other companies a lot; ergo we will recoup our expense
in the same fashion.

I think everyone agrees that RCM/PMO, or anything else is not necessarily for them. Whether this is
because of current maintenance strategies, plant design or market position is not really relevant to
anyone else except the company involved. I suppose what I am trying to say is that other Companies'
gains in using any system should NOT be used as a guideline for your own participation. What should
be used is your own company's position and potential as well as your OWN perception or
measurement of what can be gained from these types of processes.

There was one reply (whose Author's name escapes me) to this forum, that essentially said "look to
your own people for the answers to these questions" (or words to this effect). This statement is so true
it is scary in that we spend so much time trying to tell our own staff that this 'formalised process' is the
'be all to end all' that we forget that these people have probably already designed a PM process which
covers the tenet's of RCM and actually suit the plant as it stands.
Comments???

Regards

Peter Reed

From Terrence O'Hanlon

Peter -

In turning over the rock you may have discovered (or at least illuminated) the greatest maintenance
and reliability paradigm of all times: WOYOP (Wisdom Of Your Own People) Asset Management.

Of course one could argue that for some plants WOYOP is not practical so SWOYOP could be
implemented there (Streamlined Wisdom Of Your Own People). This would require a new team of
consultants with entirely new software to implement this system.

In my past life as a vendor, I had several large scale successful projects turn out great because the
people at the plant told me what was needed! (Thank goodness)

In reality, the situation is pretty grave for many in this area and a method/paradigm for
managing/measuring and supporting small incremental change that will take hold and last, support
more change etc... is really needed. One that focuses them on themselves and their specific situation
sounds even better. Find out what works and do more of that!

RCM/PMO and the like are fine but to think that one size fits all is crazy!

Thanks for such a sage perspective!

Best regards,

Terrence O'Hanlon

From Peter Reed

Terrance:

My Goodness - a new marketing ploy here for FIVE LETTER ACRONYMS (FLA) or even SIX
LETTER ACRONYMS (SLA). In the words of that sage actor Keanu Reeves. - "Whoa Dude"

;-)

PR

From Trevor Hislop

Hi Peter
I was possibly your unknown author - or Michael Doolan. Thanks for writing your tome ! I hope it
sparks some basic debate. I cannot resist adding to your comments.

I am still amazed at how often company management do everything but the obvious, which is to ask
themselves, and agree on exactly what they want the company to produce each year in terms of
volume or numbers of units, assuming that the plant will run to design capacity whenever it is required
to do so - WHY NOT ???

This is the "Top down" requirement.

What do maintenance need to do to the plant in order to ensure that it will meet the "Top down"
requirement?

This is the "Bottom up" (maintenance) requirement in terms of plant downtime, or plant upgrading
time.

The two married together gives you the "Top down - bottom up" approach.

How do you find out what is needed to work out the maintenance requirement ??

Ask everybody - from plant lubricators (anti-friction engineers) to plant operators, to shift fitters, to day
fitters, to Production Foremen to ----

Believe me, you will get far more nitty-gritty common-sense feedback from your shop floor people
then your senior management!

How often do we see PM checks that are carried out(possibly) because they were written years ago
by somebody and never changed, even though the shop floor fitters know that the PM content is
rubbish and outdated ?

I once had a Maintenance Planner who had marked foundation bolts to be checked every 3 months.
The fitters knew this was rubbish, and so did I (as Manager) but it took the threat of dismissal to force
the planner to listen to the guy's who fix the machines and change the check !!

Peter, go back to basics - forget software and books and TALK to people and LISTEN to what they
say, and GIVE THEM CREDIT IN PUBLIC ! You will gain a huge resource.

Trevor

From Ray Beebe

The approach used at a large plant was close to what Trevor says.

The plant was divided up into into 19 key systems. Each had an engineer or technical officer allocated
to focus on that system - and be the "owner" of it. (Some covered more than one system). The role
was to provide the engineering support - troubleshooting, plant modifications, changes to operating
instructions, project engineering, for that system - across all disciplines.

At that time, major improvements were being implemented, but then the task was to develop formal
maintenance strategies for each system. A formal approach was used in each case, using the then
available methodology (not RCM - but the approach did use some of the parts of the thinking).
Along with this was the production shortfall logging system. Operators entered any shortfall below
plant rating and the cause code (from 300 or so) on the shift logs. This was data processed and later
edited by a day person to allocate the shortfalls into the parent systems.

The cost of the lost production was thus neatly identified. This information, and the engineering
proposals - costed - formed the list of works for the maintenance program. Some of the tasks were
non-discretionary - if not done, the plant would not run, so these formed the start of the list. All the
discretionary items were then ranked in order of best value for money. If higher approval resulted in a
spending limit, the line could be drawn across the list, and the impact of arbitrary setting of budgets
could be seen to all.

The maintenance program was then implemented by the maintenance people, who used their skills of
management, leadership, organisation and planning to achieve the goals.

Of course, along the way there was much discussion between all concerned, so that when the
maintenance budget was handed across, all were convinced of its quality.

Part way through one year, due to a forecast of lower than planned profit, top management ordered a
5% cut across all plants. This was to be imposed on all plants - but guess which one had its spending
increased, and which ones had theirs cut by over 5%?

The annual production records kept on being broken for some time afterwards.

Cheers

Ray Beebe

From Mike Fitch

Dear, Dear Peter,

In your narrative you wonder at a company's decision to take on the expense of RCM. I too have
marveled at many American company's propensity for straining at gnats while swallowing whole
camels. They will cut a $40,000 maintenance salary so the manager can say he did something to cut
cost when times are lean. That same person which was cut, may have performed tasks having a
value above $40,000 a month in plant reliability. Amazing!! Then the same company, which was
turning a deaf ear to the technicians pleas for the time & resources to do precision work (please give
us time to fix things right), this company turns around & hires a consulting firm for $$$$ which
recommends a process costing $$$$ to implement, which they buy. And guess what the process
directs them to do!!! USE THE TIME & RESOURCES TO FIX THE RIGHT THINGS IN A MANNER
OF PRECISION. What it boils down to Peter, is that many corporations don't believe that they can
actually receive valuable guidance unless they pay a lot for it!!! Sorry for the long sentences & the
soap box. All this being said, our company is making such a maintenance process change & it's
great!!! Why didn't the American company's do it 30 years ago when only the technicians were saying
"if you'll give us time & resources to really fix the problems, we'll make more $$$ in the long run???

Mike L. Fitch

From Michael Doolan

BRAVO Mike,
you have extremely succinctly and very eloquently voiced something I have been trying to get through
on this group and at different work sites through most of my career. Lets hope you don't get "Boo'd
down" as seems to be the norm here.

Michael Doolan

From: Walt Sanford

All:

I have been reading with interest the discussions about approaches to RCM implementation. There
seems to be a "camp" of practitioners who feel it is best to select critical equipment and then only
apply RCM to this equipment, since it is anticipated that this is where the outcome will justify the
effort.

There are several potential flaws with this approach I would like to point out.

First, the RCM process itself is supposed to indicate, from a functional standpoint, what assets are
critical. To attempt to classify criticality via a subjective external process has the potential to miss
critical assets that are not always recognized as such until an analysis is performed, such as an
FMEA. Having been implementing RCM for over 11 years, at many different client sites in many
different industries, we invariable find a significant percentage of the "critical" equipment are items
which the client did not previously consider important, which were either waiting to cause a major
problem, or have been causing problems as a root cause but never recognized.

Second, even if this up front determination of criticality is fairly accurate, to only address this
equipment is doing a great disservice to yourself, whether you are in a highly proactive or reactive
mode. It is important from an optimization standpoint to address all significant assets. In a reactive
environment, if only critical assets are addressed, it is likely the result will be to increase the total
effort due to the specific proactive tasks that are justified to be implemented for critical items. If all
assets were addressed, some simple proactive tasks for less "functionally" critical assets could be
identified which typically are much more cost-effective than reactive tasks. In proactive environments,
addressing the less critical assets allows the systematic and well thought out shift of resources away
from these assets, where it is not justified, and toward the critical ones, still yielding a net reduction in
effort.

The problem is not the way that one implements RCM. The problem has been the specific
methodology used. I was around when practitioners of certain out-dated methodologies were being
berated by clients because of the incredible resources needed to apply these processes. Their
response at the time appeared to be "Yes, we agree it takes alot of time and resource. So just apply it
to the important things and forget the rest". There is a benefit to this if done correctly, as processes
can become more reliable and safe. But this benefit is often minor compared to what can be realized
if the process can be efficiently applied to all major assets to programmatically change the way
Maintenance and Operations do business.

RCM has a few, key principles that must be adhered to. Within these principles there are several
ways to "skin the cat", some much more efficient than others. As I stated before, I have been applying
RCM for over 11 years. This has been with major industrial clients in a miriad of industries, Refining,
Chemical, Power Generation and T&D, Manufacturing, Facilities..... The difference has been that we
have continued to enhance the process based on real experience and what really works for the
specific objectives needed. We did not write a text book and spend the next several years trying to
justify its cast in stone approach, and enormous resource requirements. RCM was not invented by
anyone who has a textbook published. These are simply examples of valid approaches to apply the
RCM principles. It does, however, concern me when I see things written, such as a recent and short-
sighted article in Maintenance Technology attempting to dissuade potential users of RCM
methodologies other than those published in a textbook. My response is that it is called PROGRESS.
If we never continued to improve on good ideas we would still be driving Model T's and flying in
Zeppelins.

It is my recommendation that you become educated on the principles of RCM and apply them in a
way that allows you to reap its full benefit. This is done by designing it so that you can spend a little or
alot of time on an asset based on a progressive determination of its importance and significant
faiulure mechanisms. Find the right level of rigor for the specific application. You will find the most
cost-effective way to manage your assets, without sacrifice to safety or the environment.

Finally, I would like to comment on a recent message from Trevor Hislop asking how much it would
cost for the first 2 years of implementing RCM at a facility with 1000 plant items. 2 YEARS?!? If you
can't get through that many assets in less than a few months, something is wrong with the process.
The cost after that is a periodic or condition-based upkeep of the analysis to reflect experience or
changes in business demand or regulator requirements, i.e.: about every 6-12 months spend a few
days revisiting each system.

I dilligently read the stream of very interesting comments passing back and forth, but I seldom add my
2 cents, so I thank you for your patience with this relatively long one.

Walt Sanford

From Dana Netherton

I have some thoughts in response to Walt's interesting piece. I know that people often find it easier to
read short e-mails than long ones, so I'm going to break this up into three e-mails. This is the first one.
:-)

Walt's concerns about applying RCM only to "critical equipment" struck me as sensible. In a word,
how sure are you that you have identified all of your "critical" equipment before you have examined
them all using RCM?

Besides (as he rightly notes), once you have a smoothly-running RCM program in place, why not
apply it to the "less critical" equipment that still causes various kinds of pain when it fails?

I am not personally enamoured of pre-RCM criticality analysis, because it strikes me as a pre-analysis

analysis. If you're going to do RCM, take the "Nike" approach: Just Do It! Pick something egregious,
and go for it! Then pick the next thing that is still egregious, and go for that. And the next, and the next
... until you're left with nothing that you care about.

The precise order in which you review assets -- whether you do A, then B, then C, or whether you do
B, then C, then A -- doesn't strike me as nearly as important as whether you review them in the first
place.

And I see so many people get wrapped around the axle on that preliminary decision, that they never
get off top-dead-center and *do* anything. A wonderful excuse for inaction. "Well, we couldn't decide
where to start." *shrug*

Yours,

Dana Netherton

From Dana Netherton

This is the second of my three comments on Walt's interesting e- mail. As I noted in my first one, I
hope that this will be short enough to let people feel encouraged to read it! (I also hope that it will
reach the list *after* the first one does!)

Right after Walt's good comments about criticality analysis, he went on to say something else that
puzzled me. He said ...

RCM was not invented by anyone who has a textbook published. These are simply examples of valid
approaches to apply the RCM principles. It does, however, concern me when I see things written,
such as a recent and short-sighted article in Maintenance Technology attempting to dissuade
potential users of RCM methodologies other than those published in a textbook. My response is that it
is called PROGRESS. If we never continued to improve on good ideas we would still be driving Model
T's and flying in Zeppelins.

I've poured over my copy of the Jan 2001 issue of MT, looking for an article written by someone who
tried to "dissuade potential users of RCM methodologies other than those published in a textbook."
Couldn't find one.

I did find an article by John (Moubray). In it, he tried to dissuade potential users of processes that
don't conform to the SAE standard on RCM processes, SAE JA1011 -- especially when the folks who
sell such processes persist in calling these non- compliant processes "RCM" (or "adjective-RCM",
such as "streamlined" RCM or "turbo" RCM or some such).

Is that article really such a problem? I certainly see plenty of articles (in MT, and in other places) by
those non-compliant folks, in which they throw mud at compliant RCM (which they usually dismiss as
"classical RCM") in order to justify the "adjectival" approach they have taken. In fact, in a later
comment in his e-mail (to which I'll respond in a separate e-mail), Walt seems to do something like the
same thing, indirectly at least. (I'll say more about that separately.)

In his January article, John seemed (to me) simply to be giving arguments that would counter theirs. I
would think that that is all part of the Great RCM Debate, which we have been seeing in this list as
well.

Shucks, if it's fair for the "pro-non-rigorous" folks to have their say, I should think that it's equally fair
for the "pro-rigorous" folks to have their say too.

Just my opinion, of course. :-)

Yours,

Dana Netherton

From Dana Netherton

This is the third and last of my short responses to Walt's interesting e-mail. I hope it's short enough to
encourage people to listen to it! (I also hope it reaches the list after my first two responses do!)

After talking about criticality analysis (topic 1) and John Moubray's MT article (topic 2), Walt went on
to say:

It is my recommendation that you become educated on the principles of RCM and apply them in a
way that allows you to reap its full benefit. This is done by designing it so that you can spend a little or
a lot of time on an asset based on a progressive determination of its importance and significant
faiulure mechanisms. Find the right level of rigor for the specific application. You will find the most
cost-effective way to manage your assets, without sacrifice to safety or the environment.
Two things.

First, when Nowlan and Heap invented or codified RCM, in their 1978 report, they described a specific
process that has specific criteria for examining failure management policies. SAE JA1011 says that a
process that is truly an RCM process will use the same criteria.

If one uses a process that has "less rigorous" criteria, then one is not using the RCM process. This
does not automatically mean that one is using the wrong process. But a lot of confusion that has
arisen in the field over the last 10 or 15 years, because people have used the same name for different
processes. Names do matter.

There, that's me speaking as the fellow who chaired the SAE subcommittee that wrote SAE JA1011.
Now that's off my chest!

Second, whether you want to use the RCM process, with its rigor, or some other process with less
rigor, is of course up to you. In many cases, people select their process based on business reasons --
expected costs vs expected benefits.

Here, Walt's earlier point about "critical" equipment arises again. An RCM review performed on "non-
critical" equipment often throws a spotlight on some asset that no one had ever considered "critical"
before -- but that turns out to have utterly critical functions and/or failure modes.

How might this happen? Some years ago, many sites completely ignored their protective devices --
treated them as non-critical, because their failures usually had no direct effect on production. They
might have left such devices out of their RCM program, and assigned them to some less-rigorous
process -- such as a process I recently encountered that goes limp if there is a hidden failure but no
failure-finding task is appropriate and the design boys say "we can't help you."

(Hint: according to RCM, this is one time when you don't take "no" for an answer. If your protective
device doesn't protect you adequately, you had better do *something* -- this is not a situation you "just
live with". If it's truly dangerous, and if you truly cannot protect your people or the surrounding district
from its dangers, the "redesign" *may* consist of shutting down the plant and sending everybody
home for good. But you had better do *something*, before a judge steps in.)

So. If you have plant that you feel is "non-critical", you might make the business decision to use a
process that is less rigorous than RCM, and that is also less expensive than RCM. Just be sure that
you have considered the possible risks. And make sure that your payments for your industrial
insurance and your company's lawyers are up to date.

Just in case. :-)

(And BTW if you do want to use such a process, in order to save some bucks on your analysis, you
might get quotes from both RCM and non-RCM consultants. From what I've seen, consultants often
charge whatever the heck they think the market will bear. As a result, non-RCM consultants are not
necessarily any less expensive than RCM consultants. (I've seen some non-RCM consultants who
are just as expensive, and some who are actually more expensive.)

That's purely my opinion, and I *am* an RCM consultant, so take it for what it's worth. It's certainly
worth every penny you're paying me for it!

And BTW (just as a reminder) I don't do business outside English- speaking North America, so if this
discussion persuades any of the many Southern Hemisphere folks on this list to do one thing or
another it won't mean a thing to me, financially.

Yours,

Dana Netherton
From Steve Turner

Agreed

Most times it's bleeding obvious where to start, and this is not to do with assest criticality on many
occasions. Its to do with local management enthusiasm, the maturity of measurement systems, and
often to do with the people who work in the area and their motiviation to take on something new. Sure,
the first project needs to have some $ attached.

Secondly, why not target labour productivity early in the program as with labour productivity you can
reinvest it in more reliabilty programs. Productivity is compounding. Uptime is a once off hit an usually
gets filled with more production meaning more maintenance with the same windows of opportunity.

Second, the bigger the criticality assessment, the bigger the procrastination and the more everyone
gets disillusioned.

The other point is this, does anyone work in a plant where the design engineers have thought of every
machine going down. There is one I was at recently where every failure (almost) could be by passed
or the the process run enefficiently for a while and off spec product "sort of" recirculated.

After a few workshops we became tired of hearing that every piece of equipment was not critical. The
very forgiving design had a very negative outcome on the whole culture of the organisation. Noone
seemed to care about reliabilty. No assets were considered to be critical. This was the case in theory
but overall, the output of the plant was 10% less than what it should have been.

The strategy was then to try an lift every part of the plant by 15% or some margin close.

The critical part of this plant was the culture not the machines!

Steve

From Dana Netherton

From: Walt Sanford

Last thread from me. There is a difference between being rigorous and being overly resource
intensive. There are ways to apply the RCM principles, or "rigor" as it has been referred to, without
compromising the integrity of the intent. It has to do with the organization and automation of the
approach, the order and combining of steps, and the flexibility to adjust the amount of time spent on
an asset once the importance has been determined, using the "correct" level of rigor.

Walt, IMHO, you make a great deal of sense, here. I don't know whether you and I would be 100% in
agreement in every detail of the follow through, but I think you've put your finger on something very
important. As you go on to say ...

Here's the rub. Some people have discounted RCM as a solution because they only have been
exposed to one, unpalatable rendition, which they found had more unsatisfied than satisfied
practitioners, and these are often folks who need it the most. This has spawned alot of "truly non-
RCM" offers to spring up as alternatives. We have applied "RCM" to 1000's of systems and can't
remember an instance where the application did not conform to the criteria outlined in SAE JA1011,
Nowlan and Heap, DOD applications, and original MSG-3 guidance (as many clients have verified
independently).

When my subcommittee drafted SAE JA1011, we did so with the conscious intent of making
something that could support different processes that might all be "RCM processes". In my view, the
various "RCM processes" all offer a great benefit. Where they differ, they differ chiefly in whether their
cost is greater than, or less than, their benefit.

It is certainly possibly to do RCM wastefully -- to do it in such a way that their benefit is obtained at
great cost (and in such a way that little tangible benefit is actually realized on the shop floor). As I
have said from time to time, "You *can* do RCM 'dumb'. You can also do RCM 'smart.' The trick is to
know how to do RCM 'smart', and how to avoid doing it 'dumb.'"

Here's an example of what I'm talking about. Last summer, I attended a conference workshop at
which a consultant said that his RCM reviews (using his rigorous approach, in groups) typically ran for
6 or 7 weeks of all-day meetings.

My jaw dropped. This would be 30 to 35 8-hour meetings -- 240 to 280 group-hours. I am accustomed
to reviews that run for 5 to 15 meetings -- *half*-day meetings: 20 to 60 group-hours. While a newly-
trained group of people might take a little longer than usual, I would be very seriously concerned if
they were not finished after 20 half-day meetings. In my professional opinion, if they take that long
using the process I use, they would be doing something very wrong.

(BTW, needing fewer grou-hours to complete a review permits me to run meetings on alternate days,
rather than every day, while still getting results reasonably quickly. That, in turn, can make group
members available for their normal work for anywhere from 70% to 80% of the work week.)

Of course, few folks do a review of an entire industrial facility. Most folks subdivide things in some
way. If you pick off a big bite, it can take you a long time to chew it. Did this consultant routinely pick
off bigger bites than I do?

In the course of his workshop, he offered the results of two reviews that he called "typical". The scope
of his reviews looked almost exactly the same as the scope of my reviews. So I don't think that that's
it.

OK, maybe I didn't understand his scope exactly right. But even if I'm wrong by 100% -- even if the
scope I usually use is *half* the scope he usually uses -- that doesn't account for his group-labor
being anywhere from 4 to 14 times larger than mine!

IMHO, he was doing RCM "dumb", and making it enormously costly. His client was willing to use this
rigorous approach *when* and *if* he saw an enormous benefit to it ... but in most cases, his client
preferred to use a less rigorous process that the consultant also offered in his "Fuller Brush kit" of
approaches. No surprise there -- given these alternatives, who wouldn't?

And this, I think, is how the "adjectival-RCM" processes arose. Based on various accounts I've seen
by the people who advocate them, I think that people tried to use RCM -- they really did -- but with the
best of intentions they were unwittingly doing RCM "dumb". And then, "having tried RCM", they gave
up on rigorous RCM and tried to "streamline" it or "turbo-ize" it or otherwise speed it up -- honestly
believing that they had retained RCM's essential features, but not knowing how to do RCM in a way
that was both rigorous (JA1011-compliant) *and* "smart".

How is it that people might do RCM "dumb"? There are a number of issues involved.

(And in this discussion BTW I'm deliberately going to mix references to a bunch of different
approaches I've seen. I am not trying to single anybody out. I'm also deliberately not naming names.
In this discussion, IMHO, *who* is doing things is less important than *what* is being done. I'll only
say that I am describing real approaches, ones that I've either used in the past myself, or that I have
seen other people advocate either orally or in writing. Finally, I will cheerfully acknowledge up-front
that I'm going to be presenting my own opinions on things, opinions that formed the practices I follow
today. You can bet that other folks will have other opinions and will follow other practices. *shrug* No
surprises there, either, right?)
One way to do RCM "smart", IMHO, is to have a process that is presented clearly enough to be
followed easily; this prevents confusion and mistakes during the analysis. No surprises here -- but it's
harder than it sounds.

Another is to have training that equips all participants with the knowledge they need -- an investment
that obviously reaps dividends later. Again, no surprises here, and again it's harder than it sounds.

Another is to organize the people who do RCM in the most efficient and productive manner. Here you
will find considerable differences among the consultants who would advise you.

Some will bring a consultant in, who will interview your people and produce a report. Personally, I
don't favor that -- I think it's better to for you (the client) to bring your people in and let them talk things
out face-to-face. Maintenance is a big elephant -- IMHO, let all the blind men thrash it out among
themselves (under the guidance of an expert in the RCM process). Not only will they resolve the
disagreements better and faster, but you will have an honest shot at getting them all to agree on the
way the disagreements got resolved. (And we all know how hard it can be to get two prima donnas to
agree on something, esp when they never meet face-to- face!)

Again, some consultants will use groups, but will provide an "expert" whose expertise consists solely
of having observed a number of meetings beforehand. Again, personally, I think that the "expert"
needs to be an *expert* -- someone with dedicated specialist training in RCM. Once again, this
investment reaps dividends later (IMHO). But, again, it's harder than it sounds.

Some think that using software speeds things up. Personally, I think that groups get bored when they
sit in a room watching one person push buttons; so relying on software to *execute* the process can
end up wiping out the advantage gained by working in groups. (Software can and often should record
the group's information and decisions, but IMHO this is something that should usually be done by the
expert after the meeting, when the group members have gone back to their "real" lives.)

And so forth. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it gives you a sense of the issues. Lots of
issues, lots of aspects -- and lots of opinions.

If you're wondering which opinion to follow, well, shop the way you would shop for any other service.
Get quotes from a range of firms (timetable as well as price), get references, check the references,
and decide for yourself which firms has shown you that they can meet your business needs (in terms
of elapsed time and employee labor diverted to the analysis, as well in terms of the direct cost of
consultant fees and expenses).

Walt continued,

There has been a lot of claim laid to "RCM". There was a time where we were compelled to call it
something else because of public perception (PMO, SRCM, etc.) Education on what it is from a
historical and wide perspective is recommended.

Yes, as we've seen, RCM done "dumb" gave it such a black eye in some spheres that some
consultants decided to back off from the name itself. Of course, they were also backing off from the
RCM process, so in a way they were only being honest about what they were doing.

The sad thing is that in justifying their decision to turn away from RCM, they made broad statements
about how RCM "is" expensive or resource-intensive. In other words, rather than retaining the
technical steps of the process (what's in SAE JA1011) and looking for ways to deliver those steps
more efficiently, they threw up their hands and gave up on those steps altogether. *sigh*

Some also gave up on the notion of tackling the issue in an organized fashion. "Break it down into its
elements, and pick and choose the elements you want." Good approach for an expert, perhaps, but
how many working people are expert enough to do this sort of scramble-and-sort? If they ask for
expert assistance, how can they assure themselves that their expert is doing anything more than
throwing darts at a dartboard?
What we hope to do, with SAE JA1011, is to reclaim the name "RCM" so that it *can* be used
consistently by these working people -- by the real people in real industrial plants whose jobs (and,
sometimes, whose survival) depend on getting that evaluation right.

The key attributes, and an adherence to them, are what is important, not a name, or a book, or how
much you have to spend. Dana is correct that there is something in a name, but unfortunately "RCM"
has had too many renditions and counter-renditions. Understanding the principles will allow you to
subjectively evaluate the plethera of alternatives and find what is correct for you, call it what you
wish..

*Why* are names important? Names are important because they help ordinary people talk about
important things in an organized fashion without having to be a professor at some university.

Once we know what things we are talking about, we are then much better-equipped to decide which
things we want to use.

Which is what I see people on this list struggling with, day after day.

Yours,

Dana Netherton

From John Moubray

Steve

I am due to present the article in question as a paper ("The Case Against Streamlined RCM") at the
ICOMS conference in Melbourne in June. It is also due to be published in other magazines and
presented at one or two other conferences elsewhere later in the year. As a result, I believe that I
have an obligation to the conference organisers and magazine publishers not to make it freely
available on websites (my own and others) until after the relevant events/publication dates. It was
however published in "Maintenance Technology" magazine in the USA in January, and I am sure you
and anyone else who is interested could get a copy from them. In doing so, I would be most grateful if
respondents could respect the copyrights in the article until other conference organisers/magazine
publishers have had the opportunity to derive the benefit from providing forums for us all to air our
views on topics like this. (In other words, by all means please get hold of a copy for your own use, but
please refrain from disseminating it further until (say) the end of October this year.)

John Moubray

From Dana Netherton

Steve et al.,

As a further followup, MT has placed John's article on its website, at this URL:

www.mt-online.com/articles/01-01mm.cfm

So, as far as MT is concerned, they are (presumably) happy if people to view it there.
Links to my own pair of MT articles about SAE JA1011 (June and July/Aug 1999) on MT's web site
may be found at www.mt-online.com/articles/06-99mm.cfm, and www.mt-online.com/articles/08-
99mm.cfm

Notwithstanding any of this, John's warnings about copyright stand WRT quoting the article too
extensively in e-mails or other correspondance. Provide the URL, but don't provide more text than is
needed in the course of "fair comment". (That's the U.S. rule-of- thumb, at least. I haven't a clue
regarding the rules around the British Commonwealth, of course.)

Yours,

Dana Netherton

From Shannon Hood

Each discussion I have heard of criticaility analysis seems to talk around production loss. In this
instance its not surprising it seems fruitless. We need to remember we're supporting a business, not
just production so that means a criticality reveiw should consider (amongst other things)

 Liklihood of production loss

 Result of production loss
 Safety issues (fire equipment)
 Environmental impacts
 Effects on product qualkity
 Costs to repair
 Recovery rate
 Machine complexity
 Inherent relability.
When these things are considered, there's some surprising criticality results.

I don't want to analyse us to death, but if we should consider these things.

The reality is that RCM costs money and so does bad maintenace. So there's a happy medium. If we
suggest RCM should be done on everything then we are inherently suggesting that the cost of doing
the analysis on all machines is ALWAYS less than the benefits we attain. Well, I have seen one site
spend $1800 in consulting fees and four trade mandays defining the optimum strategy for an $800
pump. So for the cost of the analysis I could have added two pumps to the store, paid for 32hours of
trade checks (thats over 2 hours per month) and still have had change left over.

My suggestion is that the cost benmefit for RCM is a lot more likely for your really critical machines
and a lot less likely for your non-critical machines - this is not rocket science. So start at the top and
work your way down til you think (or have done some really complicated analysis to prove) its not
worth it anymore.

Is criticality pre-analysis analysis? well yes. But so is a visit to a GP before a specialist. An alternative
approach would be to feel unwell and visit every possible medical specialist and have every
imaginable test, scan and boipsy in the pursuit of avoiding pre-analysis analysis. Thorough, but
probably not sensible!?
From Mike Fitch

Sandy and list,

This is so you will know how the RCM discussion is affecting at least 1 non consultant. As far as
names, I have to come down on Dana's side. I know very little about true RCM, PMO & such
(although I'm learning rapidly through this list), but I do know that when someone refers to something,
anything, I need to know exactly what there referring to. In the U.S. we play a game called football. It's
the best game in the world (now I've gone & started another controversy), but if you go to South
America & play football, your just chasing a little kickball around with no rhyme or reason that's
intelligible to me. I could go on & on with examples of misleading names. If the ISO has done anything
to clear the muddy water in the TLA flood, bully for them & goody for me. Now I can examine RCM,
it's successes, it's failures ( not some competing methodology wrongly so named) & compare it with
PMO (by the way, what exactly is PMO & if 10 different people tell me 10 different things who should I
believe?) & it's successes & failures. From the comparisons maybe (& I do mean maybe) our
corporation can decide where to invest our time, money, & effort.

What I'm saying is forgetaboutit when it comes to debating the names, accept the standard, name
your competing TLA as you wish so the difference is distinguishable, & let guys like me make as
intelligent as possible decisions on the possibilities!!!

Mike L. Fitch

From Tobias Kuners

Hi,

New at the scene [all-the-way across in Europe], just some quick thoughts on the subject:

I cannot fully agree with Dana, and also want to add that there is more to view then only production
loss.

RCM does give answers; it helps understanding what equipment needs preventive maintenance, and
what does not (=RbM; Risk based Maintenance). All based on independent data instead of opinions
and 'feelings' of mechanics & staff. Of course, you yourself have to set the limits, but once that is
done, the system fills itself. We developed a matrix in which we could classify equipment based on
the # of hours downtime to fix that part. Knowing the nature of our business, we had set ourselves
some goals. We also identified a risk of failure. Both parameters 'automatically' bring an equipment
part somewhere in the grid of the RCM matrix. With Management we sat together and agreed
acceptable and unacceptable squares in the matrix and with that data we designed our Preventive
and Predictive maintenance routines such that the equipment parts were pushed into less severe
squares of the matrix. In order to move forward we agreed to review several dozen parts per week for
a couple of months and at the same time used downtime pareto's to tackled the most severe causes
immediately when the occurred. The latter process also gave us goodwill in the company; people
recognised that we were changing things for the better.

Besides production loss, and depending on the process and industry you're in, you may want to
consider spills to the environment, process safety, quality related losses, all of which relate to
equipment downtime to repair/fix as input for the RCM matrix. To cover multiple criticality we agreed
that more then one criticality (i.e. safety and process) adds one square to the risk of failure. More then
one would be excessive with respect to the Preventive Maintenance that would be required to bring
that piece back into an acceptable square in the matrix.

Regards,
Tobias

From Kim Matulich

Gents,

Maintenance management is always evolving and through this evolution we see many systems come
and go. I challenge anyone to state there maintenance management system is best as we all know
this is just opinion. It is up to all of us to make our own intelligent decisions on what suits our needs.
Mike if you are considering 'buying' a maintenance strategy first ask yourselves a few questions

1. How much money can we spend on it?

2. How long have we got to get it working?
3. Is it going to make a defence?
4. Can we do it ourselves with our own people?

I'm not trying to down play the importance of any intelligent maintenance strategy techniques and I am
well aware that plant reliability, safety, environment, etc all play a major part in the process and I'm
not saying don't use expert systems - just remember successes and failures don't normally come from
the systems, they come from the people and more importantly the attitudes of the people. Good luck
with your selection.

Regards,

Kim

From Dana Netherton

Tobias,

Oh yes, when you use the RCM process you *do* get answers -- but RCM itself does not hand you
answers on a silver platter. (It does not say, "this asset is critical", without your involvement. In fact,
RCM itself doesn't use the word "critical". It simply gets on with the task of finding out what you need
to do with your assets.) You have to apply its questions to your own information in order to come up
with those very useful answers. :-)

As for production, well, Richard Ellis's question of course was about production -- but you're
absolutely right, there *is* much more to view than only lost production.

Dana

From Michael Doolan

Here's a question I've been dying to ask for quite a while now ......... essentially its addressed to the
upper echelon of our maintenance guru's ..... here goes ..................

The aviation industry Globally seems from all media I've seen over the years, boasts the most
regulated maintenance of any industry whether its mechanical , electrical or electronic. It seems to
work extremely effectively considering the number of planes and hours spent flying etc. . ( of course
there are a few that for unknown reasons fall out of the sky )

The aviation industry has its act together why cant the rest of our respective industries do like wise??

Why is general (or any) industry not regulated in a similar fashion?? i.e.: a Standard Global RCM. (to
be customized slightly to each relevant industry)

All work we do in its simplistic form IS essentially the same. For mechanical it is either rotating
,reciprocating or static or some variation of these forms.

Is it just because the CMMS programmers and companies refuse to come to a standard agreement
so that the profit margins remain high or is it deeper, in that the training institutions globally
(universities) can't/won't come to an agreement for some inane philosophical refusal to agree on
anything apart from their own teaching curriculum.

I know there exists .... RCM, RCM2 and SAE JA1011, (not to mention the thousands of home grown
versions around) Which, is the globally accepted minimum standard .............?

Don't get me wrong this post is not meant to inflame the Consultants or Programmers or Uni boffins
on this mailing list, but rather to try to get a definitive response to the subject. I expect there will be
quite a few differing opinions.

Michael Doolan

From Brandon Chennaux

Michael,

As a former aircraft maintainer, (specializing in jet engines) the answer is simple. Failure of a aircraft
system in flight usually has catastrophic effects, hence the high maintenance standards. We looked
intently at all performance indications and testing engines repeatedly to ensure optimum performance.
The cost otherwise would be too high.

For the rest of industry to take this approach, would be too costly, and the benefits unrealized. If you
break down in a factory, rarely do all workers suffer anything other than an outage. Therefore
managing only the critical items, identified as critical due to cost, or importance in the plant or process
is the "cost effective" way to do business and manage assets.

IMHO anyway...

Regards

Brandon Chennaux

From Terrence O'Hanlon

Brandon,

I understand the difference in consequences in aircraft vs. industrial plant failures however is it
impossible to standardize approaches without going overboard. In other words, an optimized
approach that balances safety, cost avoidance and reliability that is appropriate for all (most) industrial
settings?

What are the barriers?

Terrence O'Hanlon

From John Moubray

Michael

The principles of true RCM can be applied to any organised system of human endeavour that you
care to name, not only to physical assets of any kind in any industry. The question is what are the
principles of true RCM?

These principle have been summarised in SAE JA1011. This standard does not attempt to spell out a
specific RCM process - it merely lists the features that any RCM process must incorporate in order to
be called "true" RCM. Two versions of RCM that comply with this standard are RCM2 and the Royal
Navy's NES45. Navair's NAVAIR 00-25-403 guide is also being modified to comply with the standard
(bearing in mind that these same Navair people played a major part in writing JA 1011).

Note that the section of Navair that uses 403 is applying it to aircraft used by the US Naval Air
Command. This means that the principles embodied in JA1011 can indeed be applied to aircraft.

With regard to commercial aviation (scheduled airlines): the methodology that they use to develop
prior-to-service maintenance programs is called MSG3 (for Maintenance Steering Group version 3).
This document was first published under the auspices of the US Air Transport Association (ATA) in
1980, shortly after the Nowlan and Heap report. It was revised twice, in 1988 and 1993. In 1999, ATA
convened a working group (the MSG WG) to carry out a substantial further revision intended to
accommodate issues that have arisen since 1993. This working group includes representatives of the
major airlines, aircraft manufacturers and aviation regulatory bodies (the FAA, Transport Canada and
the European JAA). I am also an active member of this working group.

The revisions to MSG3 are due to be published in two or three stages, the first of which is due to be
published in March this year (to be known as MSG3.2001).

Note that although MSG3 was originally based closely on Nowlan and Heap's report, it contains a
number of crucial differences from RCM as defined in JA1011. (Anyone who wishes to know what
these differences are is at liberty to get hold of a copy of MSG3 Revision 2 and JA1011, and work it
out for themselves. It may also be wise to wait for MSG3.2001 and then MSG3.2002 before coming to
any final conclusions.) However, MSG3 does not claim to be "RCM". In fact, the terms Reliability-
centred Maintenance and RCM do not appear anywhere in the MSG3 document. One of the issues
currently under discussion within the MSG WG is whether MSG3 needs to brought fully into line with
JA 1011, and if so, what further modifications would need to be made. (The two documents are
beginning to converge, and I suspect that they will converge fully in the fullness of time, but it may
take a few years.)

Without going into a great deal more detail, Michael, the short responses to your comments are as
follows:

 there is a global minimum RCM standard: it is SAE JA1011

 JA 1011 allows for differences in the detailed interpretation of RCM, as long as whatever is being called
"RCM" incorporates certain basic principles.
It would be nice if everyone in the world of physical asset management sang from the same hymn
sheet when it came to the basic principles of physical asset management strategy formulation. In my
opinion, there is no reason why we shouldn't. However, bear in mind that none of the processes that
are being discussed on this website even existed 50 years ago, so we are trying to move from a state
of complete anarchy to one of (complete?) harmony. I believe that humanity being what it is, it is
probably going to take another fifty years before we reach this state. This is way beyond the end of
the working lives of all of us presently engaged in this correspondence, so all that each one of us can
do is continue, in good faith, to try to understand and to propagate what we genuinely believe to be
"best practice", and in so doing make the world a better and safer place for all who live on it.

John Moubray

From Raul Pereira da Costa

Hello All

Thank you for the very good, good and not so good messages cross this web. It has been very open
(for some too open) discussion. But please keep in mind that one size does not fit all. Not only when
you choose a pair of boots or when you try to choose a strategy, a tool, a consultant, one software
package, a book, ... There is more than one valid approach to keep up our production facilities in
production with good (may be the lowest...) possible cost. And try convince others that someone has
the "silver bullet" for all situations it's so unrealistic, as in the cowboy's movies in my young days.

Best regards

Raul Pereira da Costa

From Walt Sanford

I agree whole heartedly with John on this one. Understanding what must be present to constitute
RCM is what is important. It will allow you to properly evaluate what is out there, if RCM is what you
want and need. However, processes available which do not meet the "RCM" criteria also may add
value, as they may be focused on a different set of objectives, they just should not be called "RCM".
Just be cognizant of what you want versus what you will get (and what you should not compromise).
You will find out what works most efficiently for you, within your set of criteria.

Walt Sanford

From Brandon Chennaux

Terrance, IMHO, to standardize an approach would work only in a standardized environment. The
focus I am sure is to get the most out of what ever process the widget is performing, however not all
factories fit the same profile, or run the same process to get produce the end product. Therefore lack
of flexibility which a strict "standardized approach" promotes can be a barrier. I don't take the position
as an expert, I am trying to learn from some. My maintenance background taught me that nothing was
set in stone, and "everything" changes, from hardware to software to processes. Standardization is
good as long as it is flexible enough to change.. I know (oxymoron)

Regards

Brandon Chennaux
From Jose Duran

I full agree with you.

I almost have stopped my participation (now reading when it is possible) because of many of the
comments are taken like personal stuff and people start to be aggressive or defensive. The level of
the discussion are many times so low (offending or treating with lack of respect people and/or
organizations) because of the trend to "convince others" that we have the magic spell to solve all the
problems (call RCM, RCM2, RCA, RBMX3-5, a book, an article, etc) and we forget that our
companies are due to produce and to implement all the well know tools is not the real mission.

Jose

From Scott Chapman

ok

as a newish engineer who has only been playing maintenance engineer for a couple of years i do not
have years of experience to fall back on but i'll offer my thoughts for what they're worth.

as i see it, it is good that all other industries are not regulated. if we are regulated and all have to do
things exactly the same, where is the competitive advantage for my company? if i can save my factory
several thousand dollars by using a different method or idea, then our products become cheaper than
our competitors (or more likely we keep the price the same and take the extra profit) and this means
the boss likes me and i get to come to work the next day to find more ways for him to get his bonus at
the end of the year.

my 2c

scott

From: Walt Sanford

I like the way this guy thinks. There is always a better way. Regulation should provide limits to the
consequence of change, not micro-manage your business.

By the way, a standard is not a regulation, until someone tells you you have to comply. It is a means
to define an approach.

From Ron Doucet

Keep in mind that with evolution, progress and the survival of the fittest also comes extinction.

What constitutes progress in ones person's eyes, with all of the best intentions, could actually be
detrimental and result in an unsafe process. Although a textbook does an RCM process make, now
we have a standard that allows for evolution yet not deterioration.
You car example is great, but we have firmly defined what a car is and then we let progress take over.
As we evolved from the car to the jet engine we actually gave then different names.

Now the criteria for RCM have been defines (SAE JA1011) now let progress continue.

Ron Doucet

From Ron Doucet

Of course there is a difference between a "maintenance strategy" and a "maintenance strategy

formulation tool" such as RCM.

There are many viable maintenance strategies, and one size, by the nature of there being an
unlimited amount of operating contexts etc, does not fit all.

On the other hand, as for a maintenance strategy formulation tool, RCM II is operating context
independent. That is it will help you define the most appropriate maintenance for your asset in your
operating context. Therefore as a maintenance strategy formulation tool, RCM II, being one size, can
fit all.

Of course by this I mean that there are no assets nor processes for which RCM II can not be applied
successfully. I do not mean that it should be used to develop a maintenance program for everything
regardless of its importance or consequence of failure.

Ron Doucet

From Kim Matulich

Ron,

I agree RCMII is a good strategy formulation tool; however, I also believe TDBU is a good tool and
what I have seen of PMO I believe it also a good tool. Mike was indicating that, as an organisation,
they were considering investing in a tool - let them as an independent organisation look at as many as
possible without being influenced by just one type of process. These other tools will also assist in
identifying the most appropriate activity - actually most human brains (with the right input) can make
that decision.

Regards,

Kim

From Scott Chapman

group,

as i mentioned in an earlier post i am a newish engineer and i have been reading the posts on this list
for several months. now at the risk of opening up a can of worms, can sombody please explain (as
breifly as posible) the philosophy behind the maintenance strategies such as RCM, TPM, PMO
etc.etc. i sincerely do not want this to turn into a who is better than who debate as that serves no one.
and to those of you who have implemented a TLA strategy in your factory, mine etc, how did you do
it? was it a gradual process over time or did you go in boots and all. i am curious and i await your
thougths.

regards to all

Scott

From Ron Doucet

Scott, I hope this, as you say does not bring out all the consultants " guns a blazin" trying to sell tools.

Here goes, short and sweet: (well it was meant to be)

RCM, reliability centred maintenance is a process used to determine what must be done to ensure
that any physical asset continues to do what its users want them to do in their present operating
context.. In other words RCM will determine everything that is required including mtce tasks, operator
tasks, training requirements, SOP's, suggested and mandatory redesigns. THis is applicable to new
or old assets in any operating context. If you have been on this site for a while you will know that I am
referring to true RCM and specifically my experience is with RCM II. We did a pilot, the concept was
sound, then went in head first and have literally saved millions. (could have saved more but the
education continues)

PMO, stands for preventive maintenance optimisation, although my comments will generate
comments from Steve and Sandy, I am only commenting on the classical approach to PM
optimisation and not specifically the product called PMO 2000 or any other product out there.

PMO in its simplest form optimizes your current PM tasks. IT is not a zeor based approach. It takes
your current PM tasks and runs them through some sort of decision diagram that can validate whether
the task you are doing is technically feasible(can be done) and well written. The output of a PMO is
clearer tasks, tasks being more specific as to the failure mode being addressed and corresponding
remedial actions as opposed to the classical "Check Motor". Another output of the PMO process
should be the elimination of task that are proved not technically feasible or are unsafe.

You have to be careful with PMO because the baseline, the old PM, is an unvalidated baseline and
was probably only developed, with best intentions, through gut feel.

A PMO process, in my opinion (here goes) should not generate new mtce tasks if it uses the old ones
as the basis. It should only improve on them. We have a formal PM optimisation process here that we
use, it is very quick, approximately 2 minutes per task reviewed, but as I did not find what I was
looking for outside (as Dana said, he wanted to be able to sleep at night) I had to develop it myself.
We chose not to mix up PMO and RCM. One reviews tasks, the other determines the right tasks and
never the twain shall meet. The benefits you will get from PMO are cleaner safer tasks and usually
less of them. In the end it does not mean you will have the right tasks. The benefits that we have
realised are useful, we have decreased tasks (people were probably not doing them anyway) and
have eliminated tasks that could have killed people(this was a big bonus) and all of our task are much
more precise and cleaner and we hope to get reliability improvements out of this. After the pilot, we
have decided to review all of our PM and at the same time perform RCM on our assets giving us the
most trouble. ROI wise it is not comparable to RCM but well worth doing. As you can not RCM the
world in a day it is a good thing to do in parallel with RCM. One warning though, make sure your
process is defensible as the base line you are using, the old PM, is probably not.

TPM, I read the book by Seichi Nakajima, TMP involves unconditional cleaning and promotes
operator involvement. In my observations there are a few things flawed with TPM but I wont give you
the whole list. First, the cleaning is unconditional, you should only clean if there is a reason. Second,
all failures conform to the bathtub curve. This is about 40 to 50 years out of date. (read RCM II by
John Moubray to understand the 6 failure curves) Third, it is about operator involvement with no
actual process for determining the required tasks. It was invented in a place with no trades
demarcation and is not that easily applicable in places with trade demarcations. TPM is pushed by the
JIPM (Japanese Institute of Preventive Maintenance) who I believe said "If you use TPM you will need
RCM, if you use RCM you will not need TPM.

This is because RCM is all about people involvement both cross trades and with operations and with
a rigourous process backing it up, determines the right tasks for everyone. Do what you have to do,
have the right person do it and make the decision while all working together.

Hope this helps

Ron Doucet

From Mike Atkin

Scott,

I think you owe Ron an ice cream

Ceow

From Larry Johnson

Scott,

As the creator of the PM Optimization process I think that I am best qualified to answer your question
in this matter. I also included an explanation of TPM and RBM at the end of this section.

R.

Larry Johnson

A little background first:

I initially used PM Optimization in 1992 to help a nuclear power plant that had suffered a series of
unplanned shutdowns respond to the Nuclear Regulatory Commissions' (NRC) concern that their PM
program lacked any technical basis. The power plant had, over many years, continuously added PMs
to their program in response to one-time failures (knee-jerk tasks), Root Cause Failure Analysis, and
industry technical notices. They knew that most of the activities they were doing were effective; they
just couldn't say which ones.

I knew that RCM would be overkill for their needs - they didn't need to create a new PM program from
scratch, which is what RCM does, they just needed to optimize the one they had. Drawing from my
past experience with RCM (3 years with Electrical Power Research Institute and other earlier
projects), I devised a process that employed many of the RCM methods to validate and optimize their
PM activities. It took under a year to complete the project, the NRC accepted the results, and PM
Optimization was born.

Some fallacies:

There seems to be a lot of misinformation being spread about PM Optimization - mainly by consulting
firms who stand to gain from such action. I'll address a few of the hobgoblins right now.
1. PM Optimization is dangerous and leaves you vulnerable to lawsuits. Nonsense. The longest
running 'pure' PM Optimization program is now in its eight year at a US nuclear power plant. Since its
inception there has been: a.) No PM preventable failures, b.) A 12% reduction in maintenance
staffing, c.) A 35% reduction in PM activities with no increase in corrective maintenance, d.)
Recognition by the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations during their last seven evaluations as a
strength, and e.) Recognition by the NRC during two separate readiness inspections as a strength. If
you included all facilities actively using PM Optimization there would be well over a 100 years of
operating time between them. Not a single facility has had a failure attributed to, or because of, the
PM Optimization program.

2. PM Optimization doesn't allow you to add new PMs. Yes, of course it does. In fact, we always end
up adding new PMs to the program as we go through analysis. PM Optimization also adds new
equipment to the PM program when an omission is noted.

3. PM Optimization misses potential failures that only RCM can find. False - and true. PM
Optimization effectively addresses equipment failure within the existing PM Program but it obviously
does nothing for the equipment outside it. This seems to be the biggest misconception - that RCM
and PM Optimization are mutually exclusive. Nothing is further from the truth. In fact, we often start
with PM Optimization, establish an optimized PM program, and the roll over to RCM for the remaining
equipment in the facility. Doing so allows us to show a quick return on investment while management
is still focused on us - which makes long term funding and cooperation more forthcoming than with
RCM alone.

Who can use it?

1. Any company that has implemented RCM. PM Optimization is ideally suited for use in the Living
Program after the technical recommendations from RCM are implemented. RCM is not suited, nor
was it ever intended, to be anything else that a once-through evaluation to initially establish a PM
program. RCM's methodology, especially classical RCM, does not have the provision to optimize task
effectiveness after implementation. Because RCM is a zero based approach, which means you start
from scratch, you have to "throw the baby out with the bathwater" each time you conduct a new cycle
of analysis.

2. Any reliability program manager looking for a rapid return on investment. In the long run RCM will
show a return on investment, but there are very few short-term gains. Let's face it; a company is not
going to institute RCM unless it improves the bottom line. This may be in the form of improved public
opinion, addressed environmental concerns, better worker safety, and of course production. The
longer it takes to show a return, the more likely the program will not receive the funding it needs to
survive. PM Optimization is an effective strategy for reliability managers to produce a quick return
while securing long-term commitment from management.

3. Any facility with a mature PM program that seeks to establish a documented basis and eliminate
unnecessary PMs.

PM Optimization process:

PM Optimization employs many of the same analysis techniques as RCM. However, PM Optimization
is a more streamlined approach.

1. It starts with the equipment within the existing PM program.

2. All PM activities for the equipment are decomposed into their constituent tasks (e.g. a Overhaul
activity consists of visual inspections, alignment checks, replace parts, etc.).

3. A Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) evaluation is conducted (Side note: FMEA has been
around for over thirty years - long before RCM) as follows:
a.) Group identical PM tasks performed on similar equipment. Similar equipment has the same
equipment type, operating environment, duty cycle, and function.

b.) Identify equipment function(s) in respect to its contribution to system and plant functions.

c.) Identify the failure mode(s) that the PM task is intended to address. (e.g. a lubrication task might
address 'fails to run' for a motor).

d.) With respect to the equipment function and the failure mode, determine the failure consequences.

If any failure consequence is undesirable then the PM task is addressing a Critical failure. Critical
failures undergo PM task selection similar to RCM; the exception is that you are scrutinizing PM task
effectiveness, not trying to construct a PM program from scratch and then comparing it to the existing
PM program.

Non-critical failures undergo a 'sanity check' before dropping the PM tasks from the program. The
sanity check assures that there are not reasons, other than criticality, why the task should remain in
the program. This may include regulatory commitments, difficulty in obtaining parts, adverse working
conditions, etc.

That's the process in a nutshell. If you want more details then go to

http://www.fractalsoln.com/downloads.html to download the PM Optimization technical papers.

Total Productive Maintenance

Total productive maintenance (TPM) is a maintenance optimization process that promotes preventive
maintenance set in the framework of equipment ownership by multi-discipline teams consisting of
operators, craft, and engineers. TPM crosses organizional boundaries and the attempts to break
down the rigorous compartmentalization of work within a plant. The work team concept determines
which equipment gets what type of maintenance, at what level, and using what technologies. The
decision process used is less formal and uses the model that best fits the specific application and
work group. Similar to the RCM process, this process also emphasizes predictive maintenance. Some
sites are using this concept to some extent now in what are called "Keep It Running" (KIR), "Fix It
Now" (FIN), or "Work It Now" (WIN) teams. This is a relatively new initiative, and there has been some
limited success with this team concept, but the overall impact on the maintenance process is still not
known.

Reliability-Based Maintenance

The reliability-based maintenance (RBM) process is a hybrid of the RCM and TPM processes. RBM
begins with a benchmarking phase in which an assessment is made of the current maintenance
practices, organization, personnel attitudes, technologies used, work flow and practices, costs, and
performance measures. Using the information from this assessment, an action plan for transition from
the present to the future is developed. At this stage, RCM is used to determine which equipment will
get what level and what type of maintenance and what technologies will be used in the maintenance.
Like RCM, RBM also emphasizes predictive maintenance instead of or as a supplement to periodic
maintenance. In a parallel effort, the organization, work division responsibilities between departments,
and workflow are evaluated to determine if there is a need to recast the departmental responsibilities
and work flow process. From this two-pronged review, a set of recommendations for maintenance,
organizational changes, and reassigned responsibilities are developed.

From Ron Doucet

Well Scott I guess you got exactly what you did not want. Specifically :
"i sincerely do not want this to turn into a who is better than who debate as that serves no one."

The temptation was too much.I will refrain from commenting for now.

Ron

From Ross Kennedy

Hi Hans

Thanks for the e-mail.

It was certainly an interesting reply from Ron Doucet. It is a pity he has only read Nakajima's 1982
book about 1st Generation TPM which was poorly translated by someone who had trouble
understanding the TPM concepts because they were so new to them at the time. This is why the book
is difficult to understand.

Maybe someone should suggest he read TPM in the Process Industry by Suzuki which is about 3rd
Generation TPM and explains why TPM as a precursor to RCM is such a wise move for any industry
where operators have an impact on the performance of plant & equipment. Alternatively he could refer
to my paper entitled: "Examining the Processes of RCM and TPM: What do they ultimately achieve
and are the two approaches compatible?( www.plant-maintenance.com/downloads/RCMvsTPM.doc) "
which I presented at an IIR maintenance conference back in 1999. I have attached a copy in case you
want to share it with your colleagues.

Best regards

Ross

From Martin Theobald

AAAAAAARGGGGGGHH!

Put the lid back on that can, quick!!!!

From Scott Chapman

My pleasure.

and to all who helped, here is your virtual icecream fresh from my factory.
enjoy it before it melts

thanks for your help

scott

From Terrence O'Hanlon

Larry Johnson:

Thanks for the detailed response regarding the PM Optimization process!

A couple of questions if you please:

1) You state that if "you include all facilities actively using PM Optimization there would be well over a
100 years of operating time between them." Is there a reason PMO is not more widespread?

2) I thought that RBM was a trademark belonging to a hardware/software vendor and was exclusively
offered by them. Is there a public version of RBM?

On another note, I read Ron's post which arrived as I was typing this and I urge Ron to stay plugged
in. His very active posting of the last few days have been very educational and this list needs more
NAC's (not a consultant) like him.

Thanks,

Terrence O'Hanlon

From Larry Johnson

You are welcomed Terrence.

As for your questions:

1) I can only vouch for facilities that my company has dealt with directly. I do know however that Duke
Engineering, SIRF (previously) and other consulting firms are using PM Optimization on the same
scale as RCM, but I don't have direct contact with their clients. Besides, PM Optimization is just one
method of many that we use. Right now the hot button is Risk-based Analysis.

2) I was unaware that RBM is trademarked - do you know by whom? It's almost impossible the
trademark a commonly used terms such as RBM, PMO, RCM, FMEA, etc...
Regards,

Larry Johnson

From Terrence O'Hanlon

Larry,

I appreciate your reply about the number of facilities using the PM Optimization process. I have seen
a great deal of reference to it lately.

RBM and Reliability Based Maintenance trademark information can found at Computational Systems
Inc. (CSI) web site here: http://www.compsys.com

It is surprising when seemingly generic terms are granted this type of IP protection.

Thanks again,

Terrence O'Hanlon

From Larry Johnson

How about that. I learn something new every day. I did confirm "Reliability-Based Maintenance"
registration via the US Patent and Trademark Office and it's legitimate.

My apologies to CSI for stepping on their turf.

Thanks,

Larry J.

From Steve Turner

Ron,

Unfortunately, there is no standard for PMO hence you can't be wrong nor right. However, when we
(underline) do PMO we do not just review the current PM's. In step 2, failure mode analysis, we do
three things:

1. list the failure modes that are currently the subject of PM

2. Add to that list the failure modes that have happened but are not on the original list, and
3. Review the technical documentation (mostly P&IDs) for failures that do not appear on either and
may have hazardous or serious commercial consequences. These are mostly to do with protective
systems.

Hope this helps to put PMO in the correct frame of reference.

Thanks
Steve

From Ron Doucet

Steve, I understand what you are saying and the failure mode criteria you are describing seems
based on the guidelines given by John's RCM II book of which I know you are very familiar with.

As you know I was just trying to be general in my explanation and did not want to list the differences
between the multitudes of all the PMO processes out there. In my quest to be general in my
comments I probably should have said the "general approach to PMO" or the "main goal of PMO is
to"....as opposed to the "Classical Approach"

Sorry for the misunderstanding, you are right, there is no classical approach to base this on and
thanks for saying what your PMO process does without attempting to sell it.

Ron

From Mick Drew

Ron I think you have don a credible job of summarising some of the old world thinking re Maintenance
Improvement methodologies, I have added a section to your summary of RCM,PMO, TPM called New
Generation tools to give a more up to date view of the latest tools, which thanks to the advent of user
friendly software proagrams is available to reliability practitioners, maintenance engineers,
supervisors, technicians and operators.

Why new generation? because they use computer simulation features to take the guesswork and
subjectiveness out of the maintenance optimisation process. Please note I am a highly paid
consultant - but with a practising maintenance background and my business is to teach others the
thinking techniques to use and apply these methodologies for themselves. And whilst those on this
network thought they were safe from Aussie practitioners, ARMS Reliability Engineers have
agreements in place to market the Isograph RAMS software range in the US and a network of
instructors to provide skills based training in Reliability methods!

Regards

Mick Drew

Director Arms Reliability Engineers

The New Generation of Maintenance Improvement Tools

I have included a summary below of the methodology we use. It is much faster to build a model of
existing plant and use this to address the improvement effort. Time is not spent going through the
resource hungry logic tree analytical process, instead models are preprepared through historical data
analysis or in the case of new projects through reliability prediction techniques,and site resources are
called in to validate the models and make decisions on new maintenance strategies or changes to
existing strategies. We have found this to be the most rapid process and least costly and leaves you
with quantified models for further improvement. For example, we have been engaged by an
international company to develop a model of a new 1.4 mtpy refinery so the maintenance regime can
be optimised against production thruput IN 6 WEEKS!. You just can't do that with any other process
and particularly not RCM or PMO.

Also our interface to CMMS Systems is live and kicking!

To determine the optimum maintenance policy for equipment you must compare the cost of
unplanned failure with the cost to prevent unplanned failure. The cost of unplanned failure must
include all costs to the business not just equipment downtime costs.

In order to arrive at the optimal maintenance policy several maintenance strategies need to be
considered and modeled. There are several predictive and preventative maintenance techniques that
can be employed and compared to Redesign and RTF options.

Since business environments are dynamic,it is not a once off process, maintenance policies should
be continually reviewed to ensure they reflect changes in operational, safety and environmental
objectives.

Most organizations have the information they need to optimise their maintenance and continually
review their decisions but they lack the tools to structure and process the information.

In most cases organizations have, or are about to invest in Computerised Maintenance Management
Systems, with a belief that maintenance will improve in efficiency and effctiveness based on the
information they can store and capture in the system. In reality little is done to ensure that the
information that is entered into the system is configured in a way that generates easy to use data.
Typically little more is done with the information than reporting on work types and cost. The result
being that time is spent on entering information that is rarely read, and the CMMS is used generally
by engineers and supervisors to generate budget predictions based previous years experiences.

Correctly configured the CMMS, along with the maintenance model, can become the focal points of
the continuous maintenance improvement cycle. Through a maintenance modeling process,
maintenance policies can be optimised and the resulting strategies downloaded into a CMMS system.
This ensures that the optimal predictive, preventative maintenance routines are being followed or RTF
where it is the most cost effective option.

Typically remarks are entered against a work order on completion of the job/task. The CMMS should
be configured such that the information entered can easily be used to review policies. There are two
steps to ensure the data entered is relevant:

Ensure that the user interface for data input is configured to extract the required information, and
where applicable failure reporting codes match relevant codes in the maintenance model. Train the
workforce to understand the continuous improvement cycle and how important the knowledge they
have and gain is. Relevant skills are root cause analysis and reliability principles.

The information collected by the CMMS should then be used in the maintenance model to continually
refine equipment failure models, including frequencies and costs. The maintenance model can then
challenge current maintenance strategies to enure that are optimal.

Ideally the process should be automated so that once initial maintenance modelling has been
completed and the CMMS is configured correctly, as work orders are completed and information
entered into the CMMS this data automatically revises relevane modelling parameters and checks the
current maintenance strategy.

The continuous improvement loop uses and builds on CMMS use;

Implementation Project

Initial Maintenance Model

The maintenance model provides the basis for the continuous improvement loop using the CMMS as
its information source and review. Initial modelling involves developing failure impacts and costs of
failure to the business
The model is derived using reliability engineering principles and reflects dominant failure modes and
major risk failure modes.

Data for the model can be generated from work order history, generic industry databases, and site
specific knowledge and experience.

Once optimised to meet operational, safety and environmental objectives, outputs from the model are;

 Failure predictions
 MTTR predictions
 Maintenance cost predictions
 Costs of failure
 Risk exposure
 Equipment Availabilities
 Maintenance Strategies/Intervals
 Prioritised list of design out items
 Labour predictions
 Spare Part predictions

CMMS Configuration

The CMMS should be customised/configured such that the data entry is easy, relevant and can be
linked to the maintenance model parameters.

Work Force Training

To facilitate the continuous improvement loop maintainers and operators need to understand cause
and effect relationships and ideally be trained in root cause analysis. An understanding of the process
of failure is also important if the work crews are to contribute to the refinement of maintenance plans.

Dynamic Review

An electronic link between the CMMS, other systems and the maintenance model allows dynamic
analysis of maintenance and operational data that can contribute to revised maintenance plans. Data
that could contribute to the policy review is;

 Feedback from PM's, Inspections and Equipment Condition Monitoring

 Breakdown and Corrective Work Orders
 Equipment 'events'
 Product throughput
The dynamic review will report periodically on

 Equipment condition
 Predicted failures
 Revised intervals
 Revised policies
If changes to policies or intervals are excepted, relevant data in the CMMS will be automatically
updated.
The model will be able to continually report on;

 Failure predictions
 MTTR predictions
 Maintenance cost predictions
 Costs of failure
 Risk exposure
 Equipment Availabilities
 Maintenance Strategies/Intervals
 Prioritised list of design out items
 Labour predictions
 Spare Part predictions
For details see www.reliability.com.au

From Walt Sanford

Also be aware that "PMO" is a term used not only by Larry's company but by others as well. Ex: The
"PMO" used by EPRI in the fossil power arena is not as described here, but is essentially an RCM
approach. PMO is not a trademarked or licensed acronym. Much of what you see and hear about
"PMO" is likely several different versions. Another example of confusion in the marketplace
demonstrating the need for self education. Don't buy a name, buy the underlying process that fits.

Walt Sanford

From Larry Johnson

Walt's double right.

There are a lot of consultants out there that can talk the talk, but when asked, can't show proof that
their 'version' of RCM/PMO has ever been successfully applied.

I believe that ERIN Engineering, who also took the initials and renamed their own reliability process
"Plant Maintenance Optimization", prepared the report he is referring to. Another EPRI report
prepared by Duke Power in 1996 also identifies PMO/PM Optimization. In Duke's case they
accurately characterized the PM Optimization process - because Tom Weir, who managed the
project, was part of my initial project team when PM Optimization was defined.

The one thing to come out of all this is my reversal of the need to 'standardize' the various
methodologies. Although I am still suspicious how SAE reached their standard, I now agree that there
is a need for one.

Larry J

From Ron Doucet

On the topic of data to determine maintenance managment policies may I suggest the following as
food for thought.
As the food I present.........:

THE RESNIKOV CONUNDRUM

MANY BELIEVE IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO DEVELOP VIABLE MAINTENANCE PROGRAMS

WITHOUT EXTENSIVE DATA ABOUT FAILURES....

BUT IF WE ARE COLLECTING LOTS OF DATA ABOUT FAILURES IT MUST BE BECAUSE WE

ARE NOT PREVENTING THEM...

SO LARGE QUANTITIES OF DATA MUST BE THE EVIDENCE OF THE FAILURE OF OUR

PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE PROGRAMS (ESPECIALLY IF THE FAILURES HAVE SIGNIFICANT
CONSEQUENCES)....

SO SUCCESSFUL PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE MUST BE ABOUT PREVENTING THE

COLLECTION OF THE INFORMATION THAT SOME PEOPLE THINK WE NEED IN ORDER TO
DECIDE WHAT PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE WE OUGHT TO BE DOING!

As a side note, where I work we have extensive data about unimportant repetitive failures, we use this
data to identify the most repetitive problem to address and to measure the results of our efforts at
improving reliability. Repetitive failure data is an excellent tool for continuous improvement. It can help
you identify your biggest alligator (or croc for the Aussies

We on the other hand we do not have a lot of data on failure that have serious economic, safety or
environmental consequences and nor do we want lots of data on these failure. Preferable we would
want no data about serious failures.

Just food for thought

Ron

From Graham Oliver

Ron Doucet's message about failure data which he labeled as The Resnikov Conundrum (hello?)
seems, at first glance, to have something going for it. In a word -- How can you collect failure data if
you're doing a good job of preventing failures.

But there may be two things wrong with it. One is that if you have no failures (or almost none) you
may be over-maintaining, i.e., replacing parts too often. So you'd be getting no failures but spending
tons of money replacing parts that had loads of useful remaining life. An optimal replacement policy
should give you "some" failures".

The other thing is that the analysis of replacement intervals should also take into account
"suspended" observations. These are historical records of parts being taken out of service for reasons
other than failure. They even include parts that are still working at the time an analysis is done.

All of this is consistent with the data required when doing Weibull analysis.

Ron, and others are invited to look at RelCode on our website at www.oliver-group.com

PS -- We don't like failures any more than you do. But the alternative is worse!

Regards...Graham Oliver
From Mick Drew

The goal is not to generate failure data, it is to understand the potential for failure and predict or
forecast future failures in order to decide the most appropriate means to either prevent, predict,
eliminate of RTF. The New generation of modeling tools that simulate performance do not rely on
failure data at all. But a failure if or when it is found becomes another excellent opportunity to improve
the failure parameters, as are Suspensions.

From Dana Netherton

Graham Oliver's message about accepting failures in order to get the data needed to optimize one's
replacement polciy seems, at first glance, to have something going for it. But there may be two things
wrong with it.

One is that the more important the failure, the fewer failures you can afford to risk. The more people
who might be killed by the failure, the fewer failures you can afford to risk.

Ultimately (and this is the core of Resnikoff's Conundrum), the failures you care most about are the
failures you cannot afford to have failure data about. Because the only way you can get that failure
data is to have those failures -- and those failures kill people. The very most important failures kill lots
of people.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I am under the impression that no responsible person would run that kind
of experiment, and kill those people, simply in order to gather failure data that might "optimize" a
maintenance program.

The other thing is that the analysis of replacement intervals should also take into account
"suspended" observations. These are historical records of parts being taken out of service for reasons
other than failure. They even include parts that are still working at the time an analysis is done. All of
this is consistent with the data required when doing Weibull analysis.

The other thing is that fewer parts have well-defined wearout ages than people realize, especially
parts in modern complex systems with electronics, hydraulics, pneumatics, and so forth.

Weibull analysis only works when examining an item with a single failure cause (what RCM calls a
"failure mode"). When examining an item with more than one failure cause, the Weibull curve shifts
toward random failure (beta=1) -- because the item's failures occur in effect at random (from different
causes, each time).

(In practice, the curve often shifts toward infant mortality, because the intrusive work done to replace
something often introduces new problems that pop up soon after the item re-enters service.)

If you're replacing simple piece parts in your asset, you may be dealing with items that have only one
failure cause.

But if you're replacing assemblies -- say, electronic circuit cards, or ball bearing assemblies, or air
compressors -- then you're dealing with items that are susceptible to many failure causes.

And then you can no longer speak in terms of wearout, or in terms of "useful remaining life".

Which means that (in such cases) age-based replacement as a policy (what RCM calls "scheduled
discard") is not technically feasible -- it doesn't respond to the technical characteristics of the way that
such assets fail -- and therefore cannot be "optimized", no matter how much failure data you might
have.

This news came out of the Reliability Programs that United Airlines ran in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Nowlan & Heap publicized it in their US government report, published in 1978. *shrug* It's been
around long enough, I should think.

But perhaps it's still news in some circles.

-- Dana Netherton

From Peter Ball

Wonderful,

Graham Versus Dana!

Both have an excellent *point of view* which could be worth watching.

Given that Nowlan and Heap RCM and The Resnikoff Conundrum - from Mathematical Aspects of
Reliability-centered Maintenance are both Seminal Texts with N&H being 'out of print' we should
emerge very much wiser.

Peter B.

From Jose Duran

Hello

There is an European project called MACRO. It has been dealing with poor data (or lack of data)
handling in order to make several decisions:

 Spares and materials holding

 When to maintenance
 When to inspect
 When to perform a shutdown
 Life Cycle costs
 Project evaluation
The approach has been showing good results around the world

You can take a look of those tools in the next web pages:

www.twpl.co.uk
www.aptools.co.uk

Lack of data is something that several times produce analysis paralysis, but we need to be capable to
make decisions with poor data. It is almost impossible in most cases to have real and hard failure
data. Nobody will allow us to run to failure population of turbines in order to "know" failure rates.
CMMS in most of cases are filled with a lot of rubbish, and you can not rely on them, another good
reason for not doing that is that almost never the failure report is linked with specific failure modes
neither a time reference for specific failure modes.

Regards

Jose