Reliability Insights
RCM’s bad reputation
Improving reliability has always been the top priority of many maintenance managers and practitioners. And so as an industry, we’ve come up with numerous strategies
Erik Hupje
30 August 2023
Why do we need a Preventive Maintenance program?
Most people would answer ‘to prevent failures’.
Anyone who is up to speed with modern maintenance principles would rephrase that to ‘we maintain equipment to prevent unacceptable failure consequences’.
And they would be right.
Some failures we can accept, because the consequence of the failure is not significant. In other cases we might go out of our way to prevent a failure.
The problem is, in most cases, preventive maintenance plans and programs don’t achieve this objective. Typically, we spend a lot of effort on maintenance and still experience unacceptable failures.
And that’s because most preventive maintenance programs don’t apply the principles of modern maintenance.
Poor preventive maintenance programs waste your time and money and drive you towards a reactive, fire fighting culture
Most preventive maintenance programs are ineffective and inefficient
The problem with our PM programs is that most of them were never developed properly, to begin with.
As John Moubray, the father of RCM II, pointed out in his book Reliability-Centered Maintenance, typically between 40% – 60% of the PM tasks in a preventive maintenance program add little value.
Some of the most common problems are:
- Tasks are duplicated.
- Tasks are done too frequently or not frequent enough
- Tasks are not effective at addressing the failure mode
- Too many fixed time, intrusive overhaul tasks that would be more effective, less costly and less disruptive to production if they were condition-based.
- Lack of using existing failure data and experience to set good task frequencies.
The result is that we waste money and time doing things that do not add value. But far worse, is the many preventable high-impact failures that occur. This ultimately results in a reactive plant maintenance cycle.
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Developing & Improving Preventive Maintenance Programs
Learn how to develop or improve your Preventive Maintenance program using the principles of Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) so you can achieve higher reliability with less maintenance.
We offer a suite of courses on Preventive Maintenance tailored to hands-on practitioners (PM100), like maintenance and reliability engineers, managers (PM300), and frontline staff like Operators and Technicians (PM400).
Less maintenance and higher reliability is possible with a good PM program
- Erik Hupjé – 15 min read
- Listen to Audio
- Watch Video
- Download PDF
The principles of modern maintenance have been round for a good 40 years and are well documented in many industry books and other
resources. Yet, most organisations and maintenance teams still don’t seem to really know and understand these principles.
Let along how to apply them in practice. I this article I will discuss each of these
principles in detail and give you some practical tips on how to check if your PM program is up to scratch.
- Erik Hupjé – 15 min read
- Listen to Audio
- Watch Video
- Download PDF
Few organisations have effective preventive maintenance programs. Most PM programs are wasteful, many are ineffective. There are many companies out there that can improve your PM plan for you. But it’s so much better to do it yourself. It’s more cost effective, creates ownership and builds capability.
So, here’s a detailed step-by-step guide to optimise your PM program. It’s simple, cheap yet effective. No need for external consultants or expensive software.
- Erik Hupjé – 15 min read
- Listen to Audio
- Watch Video
- Download PDF
Few organisations have effective preventive maintenance programs. Most PM programs are wasteful, many are ineffective. There are many companies out there that can improve your PM plan for you. But it’s so much better to do it yourself. It’s more cost effective, creates ownership and builds capability.
So, here’s a detailed step-by-step guide to optimise your PM program. It’s simple, cheap yet effective. No need for external consultants or expensive software.
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