Before I put in my two cents, I would like to know what you all think in regard to this subject or if you have a similar story, please feel free to share your experience.
I recently had two separate customers share with me stories about hiring people/consultants who claimed to be "RCM Experts", in both cases their "expert" turned out to have very little experience actually facilitating a RCM analysis. One had attended a RCM public offering, recorded their analysis in MS Excel, and worked with their RCM team 1 day a week for 14 weeks and in the team delivered a PM focused maintenance strategy because their facilitator told them that they were "not ready for PdM and it would cost too much for them to get started".
There were lots of red flags within the 14 weeks that they worked on this project but the pressing questions were not asked until after the team presented their new maintenance strategy. Following this disappointment they did a little homework and found out their experienced facilitator could not provide a single reference in regard to his RCM experience other than his 3 day course certificate.
Company number two was slightly more aggressive in making the discovery that their newly hired RCM expert had little to no experience facilitating the RCM process. It turns out that company number 2 has a few certified CMRP's and one happened to attend the RCM team training that was being put on by their newly hired consultant. After a few pressing questions it turned out that Mr. RCM Expert was a new hire and had yet to attend formal RCM training and had never even sat in on a single RCM analysis!
After hearing two stories within 1 month I figured that others must have had similar experiences. I don't know about you, but any time we hired a consultant I expect and expert in that subject to show up. Getting anything less is fraudulent.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
Using RCM Blitz and AHM to Develop a Complete Maintenance Plan
From the first day that RCM Blitz™ became tool that I offered both training and facilitation in Reliability Centered Maintenance services I have told my customers that RCM should only be applied to assets where we will be able to show a return on investment in improved reliability as well as reduction in health, safety and environment incidents and accidents.
More than 10 years later I now can stand behind a tool that will quickly help your company build a viable maintenance plan for the remaining balance of your plant assets. The Asset Health Matrix developed by Allied Reliability Inc. and available through GPAllied is without a doubt a straight forward and comprehensive solution for building sound maintenance strategy for your non-critical assets.
In looking at 100% of the assets you maintain at your site of facility Reliability Centered Maintenance or RCM Blitz™ will provide a complete maintenance strategy for the top 5 to 20 percent of your assets based on actual failure modes resulting from your operating context and environment. For the remaining assets or balance of plant, the 10% that have the lowest criticality will receive a Run to Failure strategy 70 to 85 percent of non-critical assets will receive a maintenance plan developed by assessing common failure modes within the Asset Health Matrix.
The important thing to understand in regard to the Asset Health Matrix is this is NOT just a simple list of predetermined failure modes. This is a tool that takes into account your specific business and the consequences of each failure as it applies to your world building a unique and cost effective equipment maintenance plan.
To learn more about RCM Blitz™ and the Asset Health Matrix please click on the links, e-mail me at plucknetted@alliedreliability.com or call me at 585-329-7040.
More than 10 years later I now can stand behind a tool that will quickly help your company build a viable maintenance plan for the remaining balance of your plant assets. The Asset Health Matrix developed by Allied Reliability Inc. and available through GPAllied is without a doubt a straight forward and comprehensive solution for building sound maintenance strategy for your non-critical assets.
In looking at 100% of the assets you maintain at your site of facility Reliability Centered Maintenance or RCM Blitz™ will provide a complete maintenance strategy for the top 5 to 20 percent of your assets based on actual failure modes resulting from your operating context and environment. For the remaining assets or balance of plant, the 10% that have the lowest criticality will receive a Run to Failure strategy 70 to 85 percent of non-critical assets will receive a maintenance plan developed by assessing common failure modes within the Asset Health Matrix.
The important thing to understand in regard to the Asset Health Matrix is this is NOT just a simple list of predetermined failure modes. This is a tool that takes into account your specific business and the consequences of each failure as it applies to your world building a unique and cost effective equipment maintenance plan.
To learn more about RCM Blitz™ and the Asset Health Matrix please click on the links, e-mail me at plucknetted@alliedreliability.com or call me at 585-329-7040.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Are We Ready for RCM Blitz™?
I got an e-mail from a new potential customer yesterday, it was one of those that starts out with, "We really like what you do, we like the RCM Blitz™ process, we think it could help us to significantly improve how we perform maintenance on our assets, however our management and CMMS system are not ready to handle the structure and discipline that comes with completing a RCM analysis. We are going to work on implementing a new CMMS system this year and I think next year we will be closer to being ready for RCM Blitz."
As you close out a e-mail this reads like this as a consultant you are left to wonder in regard to how a company comes to decide it they are ready to perform and implement a RCM analysis. Is my company ready for RCM Blitz™?
I wish I had an easy answer. A simple questioner that one could fill out in a excel spread sheet, circle some numbers and come up with a magic score that says "Congratulations! You scored a perfect 1600 and you are now ready for your first RCM Blitz™ analysis!"
The fact is I have something easier than a questioner and spreadsheet. Having been in the RCM consulting business for over 10 years I have come to determine a company is ready when a group or single individual is ready to take on the responsibility of doing the following items;
1) Build a business case for performing your first RCM analysis by selecting a critical asset that is suffering from human or equipment based losses.
2) Gather the drawings and upfront information necessary to begin your analysis.
3) Select a small team of experts to work with an experienced RCM facilitator to complete the analysis.
4) Develop and track the implementation of the tasks developed in your RCM analysis.
5) Continue to track the reliability measures of this asset and report on the success that resulted from implementing and performing your RCM tasks.
The five steps listed above should take no more than three months to complete and be able to begin showing the improvement that will result from completing and implementing a RCM Blitz™ analysis. And, you should all take note that there is not a single step that asks, if your corporate managers are ready for RCM or what CMMS system you are using, or if there is an interface to automatically transfer the tasks from the RCM database to your CMMS system.
Plain and simple, a company is ready for RCM Blitz™ the day they first recognize that that having unreliable equipment and costly maintenance is affecting the profits of your business.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
It's All About The Failure Modes
While there are many places that new RCM facilitators fall down when it comes to facilitating a thorough and useful RCM analysis, most errors in the process start at the failure mode level. Writing good failure modes requires an expert level of understanding of hundreds of different of components. What is the component intended to do (Function) and what are the ways that this component can fail (Failure Modes).
Through the years I have tried a couple of different ways to teach how to write good failure modes. In performing hundreds of RCM Blitz™ analyses with different facilitators, and practitioners for companies around the world we have come to understand that good failure modes should be written in three parts.
Part - Problem - Specific Cause of Failure
As an example: Cooling water pump bearing (Part) seizes (Problem) due to lack of lubrication (Specific Cause of Failure)
The part is the location or source of where the failure mode begins. Looking at the cooling water pump listed above, a rookie facilitator might be tempted to say the cooling water pump failed and while this is true, where did the failure begin? It began when the bearing was not lubricated.
The problem portion of the three part failure mode is the undesired condition that results from specific cause of failure. If we neglect to lubricate the cooling pump bearing it will vibrate, heat up and eventually seize. While the bearing has been failing for some time when it seizes we now have a problem.
The third part of a good failure mode is the specific cause of failure. As we write each failure mode we should recognize that the purpose of RCM is to develop a task that will clearly mitigate the cause. If we don't get the specific cause written at the correct level your team will never select develop a good mitigating task. Again with the end in mind if we miss the specific cause the outcome of your analysis will surely miss the failure mode.
So what exactly is a specific cause of failure? This is where experience in Root Cause Analysis or Cause Mapping becomes extremely valuable. Failure Modes are all about understanding the relationship between cause and effect. The trick is to learn to discuss each failure mode at a level where a sound maintenance task can mitigate or eliminate the failure mode. To understand this lets go back to the cooling water pump.
Cooling Tower Pump Fails - Some would consider this a failure mode, I would not it only contains two pieces of a three part failure mode, the pump and at a high level, the problem. How would one mitigate this failure? Is there a maintenance task to detect, reduce or eliminate this failure mode? Would this task be applicable and effective in detecting, eliminating or mitigating this failure mode? Being honest, this failure mode is nearly useless. The only way to deal with this failure mode is to replace the pump.
Cooling Tower Pump Bearing Fails - Again, just two parts here, there is not enough information here to make a sound task decision. Some would say that we could perform vibration analysis and detect the bearing failure. While in most cases this might be true, without knowing the specific cause we cannot be sure. In many cases there are specific causes of failure where vibration analysis is clearly not the best task for mitigating the failure mode. As an example, I don't want to use vibration analysis to tell me that we have not lubricated a bearing.
Cooling tower pump bearing seizes due to improper lubrication - While we have three parts here, how do I deal with this specific cause of failure? What does improper lubrication mean? There could be several specific causes buried within this one failure mode. For instance improper lubrication could mean, too much lubrication, not enough lubrication, the incorrect type of lubrication, lubrication at the incorrect interval. It is extremely important to remember we need to have the specific cause written at a level where we know the maintenance task will be both applicable and effective in eliminating the failure mode. Each of the separate causes listed in regard to lubrication would result in a different mitigating task. Combine the causes and we now risk missing a failure mode and a task.
Remember, the failure modes we identify are the key to developing our complete maintenance strategy and most important failure modes to identify the failures that result from the context and environment in which we operate our equipment.
More information on writing good failure modes can be found in my book Reliability Centered Maintenance using RCM Blitz™
Through the years I have tried a couple of different ways to teach how to write good failure modes. In performing hundreds of RCM Blitz™ analyses with different facilitators, and practitioners for companies around the world we have come to understand that good failure modes should be written in three parts.
Part - Problem - Specific Cause of Failure
As an example: Cooling water pump bearing (Part) seizes (Problem) due to lack of lubrication (Specific Cause of Failure)
The part is the location or source of where the failure mode begins. Looking at the cooling water pump listed above, a rookie facilitator might be tempted to say the cooling water pump failed and while this is true, where did the failure begin? It began when the bearing was not lubricated.
The problem portion of the three part failure mode is the undesired condition that results from specific cause of failure. If we neglect to lubricate the cooling pump bearing it will vibrate, heat up and eventually seize. While the bearing has been failing for some time when it seizes we now have a problem.
The third part of a good failure mode is the specific cause of failure. As we write each failure mode we should recognize that the purpose of RCM is to develop a task that will clearly mitigate the cause. If we don't get the specific cause written at the correct level your team will never select develop a good mitigating task. Again with the end in mind if we miss the specific cause the outcome of your analysis will surely miss the failure mode.
So what exactly is a specific cause of failure? This is where experience in Root Cause Analysis or Cause Mapping becomes extremely valuable. Failure Modes are all about understanding the relationship between cause and effect. The trick is to learn to discuss each failure mode at a level where a sound maintenance task can mitigate or eliminate the failure mode. To understand this lets go back to the cooling water pump.
Cooling Tower Pump Fails - Some would consider this a failure mode, I would not it only contains two pieces of a three part failure mode, the pump and at a high level, the problem. How would one mitigate this failure? Is there a maintenance task to detect, reduce or eliminate this failure mode? Would this task be applicable and effective in detecting, eliminating or mitigating this failure mode? Being honest, this failure mode is nearly useless. The only way to deal with this failure mode is to replace the pump.
Cooling Tower Pump Bearing Fails - Again, just two parts here, there is not enough information here to make a sound task decision. Some would say that we could perform vibration analysis and detect the bearing failure. While in most cases this might be true, without knowing the specific cause we cannot be sure. In many cases there are specific causes of failure where vibration analysis is clearly not the best task for mitigating the failure mode. As an example, I don't want to use vibration analysis to tell me that we have not lubricated a bearing.
Cooling tower pump bearing seizes due to improper lubrication - While we have three parts here, how do I deal with this specific cause of failure? What does improper lubrication mean? There could be several specific causes buried within this one failure mode. For instance improper lubrication could mean, too much lubrication, not enough lubrication, the incorrect type of lubrication, lubrication at the incorrect interval. It is extremely important to remember we need to have the specific cause written at a level where we know the maintenance task will be both applicable and effective in eliminating the failure mode. Each of the separate causes listed in regard to lubrication would result in a different mitigating task. Combine the causes and we now risk missing a failure mode and a task.
Remember, the failure modes we identify are the key to developing our complete maintenance strategy and most important failure modes to identify the failures that result from the context and environment in which we operate our equipment.
More information on writing good failure modes can be found in my book Reliability Centered Maintenance using RCM Blitz™
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