TABLE OF CONTENTS There's a right way, a wrong way, and, a Navy way. We do it the Navy way.
-Master Chief, USN
Why do we need software to help us perform maintenance? People and organizations have performed maintenance for years without it. On the other hand, the primary purpose of software is to improve maintenance productivity and work performance. With so many prescribed statutory rules, it's hard to imagine organizations doing work without software and many have now used it for 20 years. Some do without, however, often very effectively.
It's instructive to remember the promise of maintenance information system (MIS) maintenance software as we review the changes necessary to successfully implement RCM. The software's original objective was to vastly improve the use of maintenance information. Did this promised benefit occur? In many situations, it didn't. Access to computers was functionally limited to the "front offices." Software never accurately modeled the work-control process and in some cases, the process did not lend itself to modeling, since it was indeterminate.
What was involved with goal setting, and where did it fail to miss the mark?
Software was developed to facilitate the whole of maintenance planning including the entire equipment hierarchy.
Systems are the highest unit level parts that can be removed from service and replaced singly are at the lowest. In between we have equipment trains, logical equipment groupings, major equipment assemblies, and components, all of which can be tagged, isolated, and worked at one time. (I think of equipment as component assemblies...
