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Reliability Centered Maintenance

Can you really Justify Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) - Part I
by Christer Idhammar

As a result of this column I am risking to receive critique, but also to be given feed back expressing relief from readers who believe like I do. That is always the case when I write something about RCM (Reliability Centered Maintenance)

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Can you really Justify Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) - Part II
by Christer Idhammar

My last column published in the September issue of Solutions Magazine generated much feed back. I expected to hear critique from devoted “RCM Purists”, but received nothing but comments of agreement from readers.

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Execute the basics of reliability and maintenance well and you will get guaranteed results. Part I
by Christer Idhammar

First I like to tell you about myself and from what perspective I write this article. My world is process industries such as Iron, Steel, Pulp, Power and Wood based industries such as Oriented Strand Board (OSB), medium Density Fiber (MDF), Chemical, Oil and Gas, Food and Beverage etc. In short all industries where a break down of critical equipment assets results in risk for environmental damage, personal injury, lost quality and volume in throughput or high costs for maintenance.
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Execute the basics of reliability and maintenance well and you will get guaranteed results. Part II
by Christer Idhammar

What are The Basics?
The most important and essential elements of the basics are listed above and include in more detail:
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Execute the basics of reliability and maintenance well and you will get guaranteed results. Part III
by Christer Idhammar

In this third part of this article,I will explain the very basics of Work Management.
Even with good skills people cannot be more efficient than the system they work in allows them to be. To design, document, repeatedly communicate, and reinforce the execution of the system is a leadership obligation.
When work is properly planned and after that scheduled and executed accordingly employee productivity will increase significantly and reliability will increase. This will result in faster product throughput and lower costs.
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Outsourcing of Reliability or Maintenance?
by Christer Idhammar

There are many levels of outsourcing maintenance work. The most common include:

1. Outsourcing of the whole maintenance function. This is often done by forming a separate maintenance company. This company will provide reliability and/or services to the manufacturing organization.

2. Outsourcing of work done during scheduled shutdowns and outages. This is very common in the pulp and paper industry. It is not cost effective to not bring in extra resources during peak loads.
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The Reliability and Maintenance (R&M) Vision and what to do when your budget is tight
by Owe Forsberg

Best reliability and maintenance practices take several years to develop, normally 3-6 years. It starts with a strong leader who realizes an improved availability, quality and throughput can increase revenue and profits for the corporation.
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The Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) Trap
by Christer Idhammar

This column is likely to create a lot of reactions from the academia of reliability and maintenance management, and all comments are welcome.
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The Reliability Driven Maintenance Organization- Part I
by Christer Idhammar

Any plant maintenance department wants to be known as a cost effective organization. For the purposes of this article, “Cost Effective” will be defined as: "Maintenance without waste, where waste is defined as the gap between how good the organization is and how good it can become”. The waste includes poor safety, losses in quality tons produced and high costs.
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The Reliability Driven Maintenance Organization- Part II
by Christer Idhammar

COMPARISONS

One common way plant maintenance departments measure their effectiveness is by comparing maintenance costs with other plants. This is the wrong thing to do, because plants will then spend too much time and energy explaining why the figures are wrong (unless you are the best performer in this comparison) instead of focusing on ways to improve.
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The Reliability Driven Maintenance Organization- Part III
by Christer Idhammar

PARTNERSHIP IN RELIABILITY

To achieve results-oriented reliability and maintenance, plants must realize that production is a partnership between operations, maintenance, stores, and engineering.
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