Reliability-Centered Maintenance

Reliability-Centered Maintenance at a Glance

Advantages

Efficient.
Increased system reliability.
Lowered costs due to no unnecessary maintenance.
Minimized overhauls.
Reduced sudden equipment failures.
Maintenance focused on critical components.
Incorporates root cause analysis.

Disadvantages

Significant initial costs for training, and equipment.
Savings potential not readily seen by management.

Reliability-centered maintenance leverages the same practices and technologies of predictive maintenance. The difference is that reliability-centered maintenance recognizes that:

Equipment design and operations differ.
Different equipment has different probabilities of failure.
All equipment is not of equal importance to facility operations.
Facilities have limited financial and personnel resources.

While reliability-centered maintenance relies on predictive maintenance practices and technologies, it also recognizes that maintenance on inexpensive and/or unimportant equipment may be better served by a reactive or predictive maintenance approach. Each of the aforementioned factors are considered and balanced to create an optimum level of reliability and cost-effectiveness.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Reliability-centered maintenance advantages and disadvantages are identical to those of predictive maintenance because they both rely on the same practices and technologies. However, reliability-centered maintenance further benefits from closely matching facility resources to needs while improving reliability and decreasing costs.