Reliability centered maintenance (RCM): literature review of current industry state of practice

Abstract

PurposeReliability centered maintenance (RCM) is a process used to determine activities to be taken to ensure an asset continues to perform asset's function in asset's present operating context by identifying asset's function, failure modes that could preclude performing asset's intended function, prioritizing failure modes and determining effective preventative maintenance tasks that can be cost effectively and efficiently implemented to reduce the likelihood of a failure.Design/methodology/approachA comprehensive survey of literature was undertaken to examine the current industry state of practice. Various industries were examined to better understand applications of RCM within the various industry sectors and determine those industries that RCM has not historically been readily adopted. A case study example of RCM applied to radial gates for water control in open channel canals for water conveyance is presented to demonstrate a civil infrastructure application.FindingsThe results found that RCM has been used since RCM's inception in the airline industry during the 1960s to reduce the cost of maintaining aircrafts. Over the past 40 years, an assortment of industries has begun implementing cost effective preventative maintenance tasks identified during RCM analysis. However, there is a noticeable lack of civil assets being analyzed by RCM, such as water conveyance systems and other civil infrastructure systems vital to the health and well-being of today's societies.Originality/valueThe comprehensive literature review of the current state of practice will provide a better understanding of the various applications of RCM to facilitate RCM's application to other industries, thereby reducing failure due to early identification of maintenance tasks. An example RCM demonstrates the application to a radial gate, used in water conveyance for the drinking water and irrigation sectors, which have not historically used RCM for developing maintenance strategies.

Systematic review of predictive maintenance and digital twin technologies challenges, opportunities, and best practices

“…To create proactive maintenance plans that increase equipment performance and dependability, RCM concentrates on comprehending failure modes and their effects. RCM has also been extensively applied in industry to lower maintenance costs ( Geisbush & Ariaratnam, 2023 ). According to the preliminary studies by Filz et al (2021) , a popular technique for identifying fault conditions in parts, components, or larger capital goods in advance is FMEA.…”

A systematic reliability-centred maintenance framework with fuzzy computational integration – a case study of manufacturing process machinery

“…Since the introduction of RCMs, many research works, success stories, and applications in various case studies have been reported. Geisbush and Ariaratnam (2023) provided a comprehensive literature review examining 16 industries that have adopted RCM practice. Richet et al (1995) are among the earliest work on applying RCM to improve maintenance strategies in various industrial sectors.…”

“…Since the introduction of RCMs, many research works, success stories, and applications in various case studies have been reported. Geisbush and Ariaratnam (2023) provided a comprehensive literature review examining 16 industries that have adopted RCM practice.…”

Optimizing maintenance strategies for reciprocating compressors using reliability-centered maintenance and on-line fault diagnosis system

“…However, regular maintenance also has obvious disadvantages: on the one hand, effective maintenance resources can not be reasonably used, on the other hand, it may excessively increase the maintenance burden of equipment, resulting in the reduction of working life. Especially with the increasing requirement of continuous gas transmission for the long-cycle stability of the compressor system, it is increasingly difficult to meet the current needs of gas transmission work and maintenance management [3] . Through the continuous summary of the research results, the reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) is based on the equipment failure mode and failure consequence system analysis, reasonably uses logical inference to complete the formulation of maintenance strategy, and improves the reliability of the compressor in the most economical method.…”