Achieving maintenance operations excellence through the RCM program

The aggressive demand that production equipment experiences when the production rates increases and less time is available for equipment maintenance activities, turns critical equipment maintenance into a challenge. It is then when improvements to existing processes, data collection (tools and techniques), and failure root cause analysis become critical for machinery support. This paper presents the Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) as a proven value added and cost effective approach to achieve modern day machinery demands and expectations. The RCM implementation steps are detailed along with the tools and techniques needed or improvements made for the effectiveness of the program. Immediate results are: improved maintenance job plans, identification and justification of re-design needs, training updates, and complete materials and documentation available, all these leading to uptime improvements. Long term results include revised and available spare parts, materials and tools, labor savings, and continual uptime improvements. Two different examples are presented in this paper. In one of the cases, labor costs were reduced by a 67% and material by a 75% annually. In the second example, an initial investment of $11,110 was needed towards machine overall condition improvements while annual Preventive Maintenance (PM) labor reductions of 23% were achieved. Based on the initial asset improvements and PM changes, the estimated non-planned jobs for the first six months are expected to be reduced by 50%. On the other hand, given the machine sensitivity and constant movement required for operation, the calibration activities were determined to be doubled, representing a 100% increase on calibration labor costs. Overall estimated savings for the second machine are 37% annually. Workforce motivation, customer satisfaction, and communication improvements were also derived from the RCM program as it seeks to listen to the voice of the customer, get to the root cause, correct the issue, and monitor the results.