Overview

TRCM analysis is time-consuming, and companies must balance time against value. Without implementation, there is no value but many organizations have not benefited from RCM although they have done complete, system-by-system RCM analysis. Perhaps they're too interested in quick results. Perhaps it's a lack of patience ultimately, everyone suffers from that, too. However, there is no value in academic RCM exercises or dismissing RCM altogether because you fail to take all the steps.

As a practical matter, I've rarely (probably never) had the luxury of time to do a "complete" analysis. In fact, the "complete RCM" analysts I've met have never claimed that their complete analysis was final. (No one would care [or dare] to do so, except when pressure to implement RCM comes in major part from regulatory agencies.) My focus instead has been implementation, as opposed to theoretical basis development. It's most effective to pass along a maintenance optimization philosophy in the context of solving operational and maintenance problems.

Nuclear plants have extensive formal maintenance plans because the NRC drives the need. Fossil plants have little to nothing. R rules are the same. Nuclear plants simply have greater documentation, justification, and "traceability" requirements. Each environment has needs, for which the maintenance optimization answer is the same, as it should be. Studies by EPRI on competing methods indicate PMO outcomes are largely the same and depend less on specific process than upon skill and knowledge of...