Reliability Centered Maintenance - in Use

In Use

After being created by the commercial aviation industry, RCM was adopted by the U.S. military (beginning in the mid-1970s) and by the U.S. commercial nuclear power industry (in the 1980s).

Starting in the late 1980s, an independent initiative led by John Moubray corrected some early flaws in the process, and adapted it for use in the wider industry. John was also responsible for popularizing the method and for introducing it to much of the industrial community outside of the Aviation industry. (RCM2)

In the two decades since RCM2 was first released, industry has undergone massive change. Increased economic pressures and competition, tied with advances in lean thinking and efficiency methods meant that companies often struggled to find the people required to carry out an RCM initiative.

At this point in time many methods sprung up that took an approach of reducing the rigour of the RCM approach. The result was the propagation of many methods that called themselves RCM, yet had little in common with the original concepts. In some cases these were misleading and inefficient, while in other cases they were even dangerous.

Since each initiative is sponsored by one or more consulting firms eager to help clients use it, there is still considerable disagreement about their relative dangers (or merits). Also there is a tendency for consulting firms to promote a software package as an alternative methodology in place of the knowledge required to perform analyses.

The RCM standard (SAE JA1011, available from http://www.sae.org) provides the minimum criteria that processes must comply with if they are to be called RCM.

Although a voluntary standard, it provides a reference for companies looking to implement RCM to ensure they are getting a process, software package or service that is in line with the original report.