TABLE OF CONTENTS The problem with twin-engine planes is that they double your chance of engine failure.
(Aviation anecdote)
RCM is a maintenance perspective in an operational context understanding plant goals, needs, and equipment (e.g., how equipment serves, ages, and fails), and then developing a maintenance strategy to optimize outcomes in the context of your goals. It opens an operations-maintenance dialog. It recognizes the joint roles of operators in maintenance and maintenance in operations. When we understand and quantify roles in the maintenance process and understand maintenance limitations where and when to involve design engineering we get better in all ways.
These words are obvious but, sadly, operations and maintenance have been overlooked in recent industrial research in the U.S. It wasn't always this way.
Early in the 20th century, Frederick Taylor, William Shewhart, W.E. Deming, Joseph Juran, and other Americans developed models for improving production, management, and organizational theory. Western Electric, Ford, General Electric, United States Steel, and Westinghouse led the world as manufacturing powerhouses using these models. Americans prided themselves for producing the best products with the best methods. Understanding how things worked, inside and out, was taken for granted as American "know-how." Profound process knowledge the foundation of American industry was an accepted standard.
As skill levels and standards of living changed, the workforce changed as well. Production prowess became less important as the post-World War II era progressed. American goods were still in demand but inflation of the 70s was paced by cultural and social change. Capital availability dropped. The...
