Reliability Centered Maintenance Meets Enterprise Asset Management – Avoiding the Disconnect
A Special Publisher Feature by Terrence O’Hanlon, CMRP

Ever wonder why there is such a huge disconnect between your CMMS/EAM Software vendor and the reliability and maintenance work that actually takes place on the plant floor? 

Recently I was fortunate enough to be invited to a major Enterprise Asset Management vendor event.  The event included product managers, programmers, implementation specialists, marketing staff and trainers.  They were seeking answers to what the future held for maintaining physical assets and I guessed that is why they invited me.  There were no clients or users at this meeting.

After two days of meetings – some interesting presentations and some not – they turned to me and asked if I had anything I would like to present to the group?   Not one to ever turn down a chance to address a captive audience or to influence the thinking of 75 people who supply a large percentage of the software that accounts for maintenance – I quickly accepted.

I asked for a show of hands of those who had heard of Reliability Centered Maintenance.  Most of people in the room raised their hands so I continued.  I asked how many could quote at least one of the seven questions posed by a Reliability Centered Maintenance analysis and not one of the 75 people in the room raised their hand.

Remember – these are folks, whose livelihoods depend upon making, installing and training for software that automates the maintenance process.

There was not one single representative that had ever worked directly in the maintenance and reliability community that was part of that team!  I have been involved with numerous other asset management software vendors, big and small; who were no better in terms of resident knowledge of maintenance.  It is just business as usual.  It is any wonder that 57% of EAM Implementation fail to generate the expected results or return?  Only 20% characterized their CMMS/EAM implementation as successful.

I have also been to companies where extensive Reliability Centered Maintenance analysis has been performed.  The RCM analysis lays out a complete roadmap to ensuring reliable plant operation, yet it sits dormant in a spreadsheet or in 3 ring binders and has never been implemented or entered into the EAM/CMMS system.  Our studies show that 71% of Reliability Centered Maintenance programs fail to generate the expected results or returns.

Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) or PM Optimization (PMO) are the processes that will define the maintenance tasks to be performed to ensure reliability.  The Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) Software is the system that will manage, store, trend, report and archive the work processes, procedures, materials, labor and paperwork.  They fit hand in glove.

With both RCM and EAM implementations experiencing such high failure rates, perhaps we should throw both methods out the door.  Processes that fail more often that they work would seem to be counter intuitive and should be avoided.  In this case – the answer is not so simple.

Reliability Centered Maintenance has been around for over 30 years and when implemented properly – it has proven itself time and again.  When adding PM Optimization into this category, there simply is no better way to determine the proper maintenance work to ensure reliable machinery or system function.  If you have not performed RCM/PMO you can ask yourself what the foundation or basis for all of the work orders in your facility is and the likely answers are:

• We have always done them this way
• If a little PM is good then a lot of PM is great
• The OEM recommended these PM’s
• I go by gut feeling and I am right most of the time
• Or worse – I do not know why we are doing this work!

Major studies show that only 11%-17% of failures are time related.  If you are spending more that 20% of your effort and budget on time based PM’s, much of that work is not adding value or preventing failure.  Your PM’s might actually be creating failures!

You need a method to direct value added maintenance work that prevents failure and you need an information management system to direct and track the history, the labor and the material.  You need RCM/PMO to define the tasks and you need an EAM to manage them.

That is why we have collocated RCM-2007 – The Reliability Centered Maintenance Managers’ Forum with EAM-2007 – The Enterprise Asset Management Summit April 3-6, 2007, held at the beautiful Sheraton Waikiki in Honolulu Hawaii.  This event includes learning and networking for both beginner and advanced practitioners.  Participants will hear real world case studies of how companies made RCM and EAM work.  We have also assembled the leading RCM/EAM subject matter experts from around the world to lead a series of half day workshops.

Unlike software user conferences, this event is independently produced and managed by Reliabilityweb.com. Being independent means we can design an event that revolves around you – the maintenance and reliability professional.

I am sure some of you reading this will provide your own NO answer to even daring to think about or ask permission for a maintenance and reliability conference in Hawaii.  Why is it OK to go to Cincinnati but not Honolulu?  We know that is OK for maintenance to look good and to feel good.  If you can bring back a strategy to achieve operational excellence through reliability and asset management – you should be able to go to the tip of Mount Everest or Timbuktu if you need to.  If you are seeking reliability solutions, then we encourage you to test the enlightened nature of your management, heck why not even invite your manager to attend (this conference is your best shot at getting him/her to a reliability event) – and book a ticket to RCM-2007/EAM-2007 today!

See for yourself why 90% of our past participants report taking back information that created immediate improvements in their organizations.  Please visit www.maintenanceconference.com for more program details