Goldilocks didn't want her porridge to be too hot or too cold or her bed to be too big or too small. She wanted everything just right. If she were our maintenance manager and followed her instincts, she would allocate our maintenance resources based on the criticality of the equipment. Some equipment would be attended to with every resource in our tool kit, while others may receive minimum attention. If she were on our Reliability Engineer/Installation team, she would use the appropriate level of available accessories to accomplish that goal.
Knowing how to determine criticality is one key to determining the optimum reference state. The desired end result is finding the sweet spot, not doing more than necessary, possibly chasing diminishing returns, and leaving needed capability untapped.
Several criteria can be considered when determining the criticality of the process we are reviewing. The most commonly employed considerations are potential safety risks, followed by the production impact and then the cost to repair.
- Once we establish the criticality of a process, we must then get to work:
- Outfitting the machine to prepare it for the projected task
- Ensuring employee's skill sets are matched with the technical needs to carry out the mission
- Selecting and executing the minimum safe level of maintenance to support the needed level of reliability (reliability-centered maintenance aka RCM)
- Monitoring the process to ensure we are meeting our objectives.
Once that is completed and our people are properly trained, we must select and implement the correct maintenance regime to support this process at target levels. Applying the Reliability-Centered Maintenance process will assist in establishing the needed maintenance.
Some practitioners believe that RCM is applied to achieve the highest possible level of reliability. While that is the intended result for our most critical equipment, it does not hold true for other levels of criticality. RCM is intended to achieve the desired level of reliability by applying the minimum level of maintenance required while maintaining an acceptable level of risk.
This is all about making Goldilocks happy!
About the Author
Retired after nearly 39 years at The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., Jerry has held several corporate and plant positions in engineering, maintenance, and production. For the last 12 years, he w...
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