Page 405 - Improving Machinery Reliability

Maintenance for Continued Reliability 369

cy. The success or failure of RCM is thus intimately linked to the experience back-
ground, training, motivation, and resourcefulness of an organization. Let’s call this
another qualifier or basic need; again, we will have to come back to this issue.
However, the success or failure of RCM is even more strongly influenced by man-
agement’s perception of the daunting task at hand. All too often, managers have nei-
ther the patience nor the understanding to support and encourage the tedious learn-
ing, documentation, stewardship, and guidance-and-direction effort that must be
expended to make RCM a success. And rare indeed is the advocate-purveyor of
RCM technology training who will muster the courage to candidly discuss manage-
ment misunderstandings, or what we earlier called qualifiers, while soliciting busi-
ness. There have also been allegations that not every RCM trainer has sufficient
practical experience to appreciate when, where, which, and why certain elements of
aerospace-derived RCM are not applicable to, for example, a refinery. In those
instances, the client could be saddled with cumbersome, procedure-driven exercises
that add little, if any, value.

Essential Question to Be Asked

Let’s suppose we condense the RCM approach into a few essential questions and
then explore whether we have the talent, resources, and ability to answer each of
them authoritatively and accurately. Being able to answer each question as we
embark on RCM will be critically important to its success.

1. What are the functions and associated performance standards of the equipment?
What is the life cycle cost of the machine or of its weakest, most failure-prone
or critical component in a “best-of-class” plant?
-If we don’t know that a given pump in our plant fails four times as often as a
comparable pump in identical service elsewhere, RCM may be premature.
We should first concentrate our efforts on answering the simple questions,
“What are they doing that we aren’t doing” or “What are we doing that they
aren’t doing.” What sense would it make for the owners of our pump to
spend money ascertaining that the pump bearings typically last 14 months,
and that they should therefore be scheduled for changeout every 13 months?
Why not expend effort to ascertain that “others” have found it cost-justified
to, let’s assume, install superior magnetic bearing housing seals (see Figure
51), and that this upgrading prevents moisture contamination of the lube oil,
the root cause of inadequate bearing performance at your site? You may find
that the pump bearing life is now extended to 36 months or more. That, now,
is a wise use of study time and monetary resources!
2. How might this asset fail to fulfill its intended function?
-If we presently don’t have the dedicated resources or experienced personnel,
how and by whom will this question be answered? Are we prepared to invest
in the time and training needed to answer this question? Should we engage a
knowledgeable consultant who can provide the answer? How would it affect
the morale of our organization if we hired this consultant? How would we
ascertain that the consultant is, indeed, both qualified and knowledgeable?