TABLE OF CONTENTS Streamlined RCM can be summarized as follows:
Download the master equipment list.
Classify systems using risk, production or cost criteria RCM analysis.
Pick a system(s) for analysis.
Identify the system's functions.
Identify the system boundary scope and interfaces.
Locate and prepare reference materials: P&ID drawings (critical equipment) and design descriptions (for functions).
Designs start with systems function-oriented, high-level design descriptions. Large facility design is based on systems. If one understands systems, the designer's building blocks, one understands the design. Systems partition functions so that designs may be formalized and translated into equipment construction requirements.
The easiest way to evaluate equipment loss or, equivalently, identify the contribution to system functionality, is to discover the equipment that can cause functional loss. With functions restated as failures, it is simple to picture the components that cause function loss and the way any component failure affects system functions. For example, if a pressure vessel function is to contain fluid contents under all conditions of pressure and overpressure, the function failure statement is fails to contain contents under all conditions of pressure and overpressure. This statement enables the designer to
focus on equipment providing protection
establish design limits for credible overpressure
identify the catastrophic secondary failure (vessel overpressure rupture) protected
think inductively about how higher level functions that could be affected by component functional losses
Functionality flows upward. One view is that systems are a hierarchy of supplied functions. In integrating equipment into systems, the challenge is to...
