The Beauty of
RCM BlitzI'm often asked as I train facilitators or present at various reliability conferences; "How did
RCM Blitz come to be?" Truth is I enjoy being asked this question more than any other. I'm proud to answer that RCM Blitz was developed as a result of recognizing a need. I had been to a few other training events for other methodologies and we had even tried to launch an effort at Eastman Kodak in Rochester, New York but to my disappointment the effort had failed. The more I read, studied and learned about
Reliability Centered Maintenance the more I was convinced it was something our company needed to get into. The problem we faced was the previous failed effort that had cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars. How could we now convince managers that we needed to try RCM again?
The answer could be found in the job title of any good reliability engineer;
"This individual must possess the tools to identify key problems, use structured tools to identify the causes of the problems, and develop countermeasures to eliminate, reduce the frequencies, or the consequences of the problem."We in fact did have a problem. We had invested money in RCM training and RCM analyses and had nothing to show for it. Now, all I needed to do was identify why our previous effort had failed. The answers were found in the application of a Root Cause Analysis.
By bringing back some of the players from the original RCM effort we were able to identify several causes for the failed effort.
1. The process took too long to complete. The quickest effort took three months to complete the analysis, the longest took over six months.2. Of the five RCM analyses completed only one had been fully implemented. The other four implemented no tasks or very few tasks.3. The one RCM that was implemented identified only a few changes to the present maintenance strategy but did locate two significant redesigns that helped to reduce conditional probability of a hidden failure.4. The RCM teams did not have positive feedback to area managers following the analysis.5. The specific methodology used did nothing to address the main concern of spare parts.6. The teams felt that the process was just another program of the month for area managers and that there was "Nothing in this for me".Does any of this sound familiar? The trick now was to address the causes and make recommendations for change to our RCM provider. From the RCA I offered the following recommendations to the company who had provided our training.
1. The RCM process needs to be made faster. We would like to speed the process up by eliminating redundant conversation caused by the two hour meeting format by going to all day meetings.2. We would like to work our way through each failure mode from identification to decision instead of discussing failure modes and effects and then coming back to make decisions. The time saved here will speed the process.3. In our five previous analyses we tended to focus or efforts on specificity on equipment that had potential impact on Environmental, Health and Safety. We have made the decision to Rank our Equipment Criticality and use reliability measures, specifically Overall Equipment Effectiveness to identify candidates for RCM analysis.4. Implementation for our previous efforts was poor, as a result we would like to make changes to your database to include a specific implementation plan or develop our own to record and track implementing.5. Spare parts need to be a part of the RCM process. Spare parts have become a major issue with our maintenance organization. In the previous RCM analyses performed here it was noted that we made the decision to run a component to failure 326 times. Of those 326 RTF decisions the part was accounted for in only 87 times. Without these parts are equipment in most cases would not run.6. In our post analysis review it was noted following all five reviews that the trades people and operators did not make a "what is in this for me" connection in attending the participant training or analyses. You will need to develop a section within the training module to clearly address this.I called our provider and sent the information in a e-mail clearly stating that we were ready to begin identifying new equipment for analyses and that we would like to begin within the next two months. When could we expect them to address our list and be ready to begin?
The answer was shocking, remember we had only asked for one change in the methodology (the spare parts assessment) and some additional information in the participant training for maintenance and operations people.
"Mr. Plucknette, while we appreciate your recommendations we are not in the business of changing our methodology based on the reactive whims of a company or organization. Our methodology is sound start to finish it is based on years of experience and thousands of RCM analyses."So much for customer feedback. The note from our ex-provider was polite, the phone call that followed was not. The remaining option was to, lick the wounds and go back and study the work of Stan Nowlan and Howard Heap. The result was RCM Blitz.
Nearly ten years later I now have years of experience and have completed nearly one thousand RCM analyses. The changes were necessary, they all have worked and in fact we have added a few more. Some were even suggestions that came from our clients!
Imagine that!
