Page 6 - RCM - A Practical Guide

RCM - A Practical Guide

A WORD ON PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE

WHAT IS IT?
We stated before that preventive maintenance (PM) is an investment, a trade-off, that an organisation
makes in order to enable its equipment (and therefore business) to maximise its potential.
Practically speaking, maintenance is the act of causing a condition to continue. What that condition is
can change depending on what techniques you’re applying and we’ll touch on what that means, in the
context of RCM, later. For now, and for arguments sake, let’s say that we apply maintenance to
equipment in order to cause its condition (operating) to continue.

WHAT CAN IT ACHIEVE?

Maintenance cannot deliver miracles. After all, no amount of grease or inspection can turn a hammer
into a nail gun.
What does that mean to us?
It means that we understand that if an asset has been purchased that is not capable of meeting a
requirement then preventive maintenance will not help.
Maintenance can (arguably, will) be successful when it is used to preserve the gap between what an
operator expects of its asset (Want) and what the asset is capable of (Can) - See Figure 1 - Want and
Can .

Figure 1 - Want and Can
For example:
Most new cars are capable of travelling at speeds of at least 100 mph but, in normal use, we as
operators only want them to operate up to the national speed limit. Maintenance, in this case, will
keep the vehicles inherent ability at a greater level than that usually required.
However, what tends to happen over time is that performance can degrade, the operator can change
the way that they use the equipment or even change the equipment itself without necessarily
understanding the effect.

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