So, how many Teams do you have?
… Safety Team, Quality Team, Continuous Improvement Team, Operational Improvement Team, Lean Team, Kaizen Team, TPM Team, 5S Team, 6 sigma Team, RCA Team, Maintenance Improvement Team…
And… how many meetings a week? What do the Teams work on? Process/content development or Process/content optimization/improvement? It has been said by many folk, that “RCM takes too many resources and too much time”. RCM to me is compliance to the SAE JA1011 standard.
Personally, I believe it would save time and resources, if it is well understood, which it is not. In our industrial maintenance lives, we end up attending an abundance of various team meetings, and Maintenance is quite likely to have a number of tasks to be executed as a result of the outputs of these team meetings. Likely, we will need to tie up a couple of resources for each of the teams weekly, whether to attend the meetings or deal with the outcome of the meetings.
For instance, let’s say that there was a quality issue, where foreign material entered the product causing a quality defect. The quality team would identify the issue, the RCA team would analyze the issue and the maintenance team would end up with a work order(s) to execute. Simple or complex there is likely 3 man-days of effort to identify, analyze and execute the corrective action for this 1 failure mode.
In an RCM2 analysis, a rookie practitioner should be capable of 5 failure modes per hour. So not only would the RCM2 analysis identify and recommend a preventative action, but would also identify and recommend actions for 4 additional failure modes, with the same
RCM Analysis Team. While the RCM2 team was identifying these 4 additional failure modes, they would be identifying; 1) is it technically feasible and 2) worth doing. Only tasks which are worth doing are acted upon in a RCM analysis, so the tasks are already lean when they come out of the analysis. Certainly there would be opportunity for improvement and optimization, which should be the focus of improvement teams, not identification/development of the issue.
Quality, in a RCM analysis, is part of the Operating context and Asset Function. The Operating context of a RCM2 analysis is significantly important to provide all information in regards to the scope and level the RCM analysis will deal with. An appropriate Function Statement would identify the Quality control parameters or quality performance criteria. “To produce 1000 widgets a hour, with a reject rate of < 1%.” One of the Functional Failures would then be “Unable to produce widgets with a reject rate <1%.” This would then lead the RCM Team to analyze how this could happen, and identify all the FM’s, FE’s and recommended actions to prevent or minimize the risk and consequences of these failure modes occurring in the first place. With one additional step, a corrective action or management strategy could also be developed so there are less surprises if the FM were to occur. And one additional bonus with a RCM analysis, it is done before the issue has occurred. We don’t need to write up the issue on a Quality issue form, and we don’t have to write a letter to the client who identified the quality reject, and we don’t have to attend a Quality Improvement Team meeting to communicate what will be done to prevent this one FM from occurring again, and finally, we don’t need to tie up resources reactively to address the one corrective action. It is estimated that it takes 6-10 times the resources to react than it does to prevent or predict the occurrence.
A diligent and concise RCM2 analysis will identify all FM’s which are reasonably likely to occur, as long as the performance criteria (want/need) are identified in the Operating Context and Function of the asset.
Most of the Safety Teams I have participated on, dealt with correcting issues which caused an injury or a near miss incident. A RCM2 analysis, will not only identify, what FM’s could cause a safety incident, but also identify any hidden FM’s which are not evident to the Operating Crew on it’s own. This is significant, hidden failures abound in industry and no other tool that I have seen leads the group to identify these hidden FM’s and provide a tool to assure, based on probability and historical failure rate, that the component/system will be inspected on a frequency which will minimize the risk
potential for the safety incident.
How much time did the last safety incident take? 8-10 hrs? 3-4 days?? Again the RCM analysis would identify ~ 5-8 FM’s per hour.
If an organization has a TPM environment, this would be identified in the Operating Context, and to that point, the RCM practitioner and the RCM Team would understand that tasks identified in the analysis, may be assigned to the operations group. No separate Team is required to identify the tasks which would be operational, but would be needed to identify training programs, and improvement of the activities and training plan for the individuals.
All of this and a maintenance program too, focused on preventing/ managing the consequences of a functional failure.
Too much time and too many resources? If you are looking to streamline your operation, look to identifying a means which will identify all potential FM’s, address all the performance criteria, and through the development of a proper function statement address all aspects of an assets performance and associated tasks to maintain a safe, environmentally, friendly, quality driven, leanly produced product, look to the diligence of a RCM2 analysis.
