Classical RCM

RCM (Reliability Centred Maintenance) was born out of necessity in the US airline industry in the 1960s/1970s as increasing preventive maintenance led to higher operating costs but did not provide the required improvement in safety and reliability.

The original 500 page report on RCM prepared by F S Nowlan and H F Heap was published in 1978 and provided the framework for determining what preventive maintenance and other actions are needed for complex equipment.

Classical RCM follows the concepts established by Nowlan and Heap, and further refined in MSG-3 - the standard for setting a maintenance programme as developed by the airlines, military and nuclear industries.

An analysis is completed for each system or item of plant. It includes the following steps

  • Functions - what you want the plant to do; includes performance standards
  • Functional Failures - how the plant may be not be able to meet a functional requirement
  • Failure modes - what can go wrong to result in functional failures and what would be the causes
  • Failure Effects - what the effects of each failure mode would be
  • Consequences - identifies one of five types of consequence for each failure mode
  • Actions - uses RCM Decision Logic to determine what preventive maintenance or other actions, if any, are recommended

GGR's development of Classical RCM provides enhanced action decision logic and eliminates the jargon that can often be a barrier to acceptance of the approach.

Classical RCM is used primarily by organisations that have a commitment to standard RCM

Key features:

  • Rigorous task selection logic
  • Comprehensive documentation of every step
  • Standard RCM