Utilizing Reliability Centered Maintenance to Reduce Equipment Down Time
Reliability centered maintenance is one of the procedures used by many businesses to ensure that their resources continue to work at minimal levels.
Reliability centered maintenance, or RCM, is the process of creating a regular maintenance schedule so that as few break downs as possible happen with the company's resources.
For example, think about company cars.
In theory you could just drive them until they develop problems.
Burst tires, engine troubles, etc.
However, RCM dictates that you have regular check ups and maintenance for the vehicles to check and change fluids, test the tires and all of the other necessary maintenance you have to go through to keep the machine running.
This is often more expensive in the short-term, since you're paying for the upkeep and changing out worn parts that may still have time left on them, but in the long run it is much less expensive.
RCM In Bigger Industry RCM is a procedure that can be applied to nearly any kind of resource that requires maintenance.
Whether you're discussing a computer network or industrial machinery, time and use take their tolls.
So you can either wait until things go wrong and fix them, or you can cough up the cost for regular maintenance to fix small problems now and prevent bigger problems from happening later.
More Than Cost It isn't just big repair bills later versus smaller ones in the here and now either.
For instance, say that you drove the company car till something burst.
If you did that then you would have bigger, more expensive repairs, generally speaking.
However, it would also take more time to fix, and it might result in something that can't be fixed, like a seized engine.
That would require a new engine, or the purchase of a new vehicle.
And what's worse, the downtime associated with these events is much bigger, leading to a bigger cut into profits.
While doing preventative maintenance and keeping spare machines and spare parts on hand is more expensive up front, it does lead to less expensive problems down the line.
Businesses should, by and large, use RCM as a way to prepare for the worst and to make sure they always have back ups when they need them.
After all, when something goes wrong there's no reason that should make your business grind completely to a halt.
That's the fast road to losing all profits.
Reliability centered maintenance, or RCM, is the process of creating a regular maintenance schedule so that as few break downs as possible happen with the company's resources.
For example, think about company cars.
In theory you could just drive them until they develop problems.
Burst tires, engine troubles, etc.
However, RCM dictates that you have regular check ups and maintenance for the vehicles to check and change fluids, test the tires and all of the other necessary maintenance you have to go through to keep the machine running.
This is often more expensive in the short-term, since you're paying for the upkeep and changing out worn parts that may still have time left on them, but in the long run it is much less expensive.
RCM In Bigger Industry RCM is a procedure that can be applied to nearly any kind of resource that requires maintenance.
Whether you're discussing a computer network or industrial machinery, time and use take their tolls.
So you can either wait until things go wrong and fix them, or you can cough up the cost for regular maintenance to fix small problems now and prevent bigger problems from happening later.
More Than Cost It isn't just big repair bills later versus smaller ones in the here and now either.
For instance, say that you drove the company car till something burst.
If you did that then you would have bigger, more expensive repairs, generally speaking.
However, it would also take more time to fix, and it might result in something that can't be fixed, like a seized engine.
That would require a new engine, or the purchase of a new vehicle.
And what's worse, the downtime associated with these events is much bigger, leading to a bigger cut into profits.
While doing preventative maintenance and keeping spare machines and spare parts on hand is more expensive up front, it does lead to less expensive problems down the line.
Businesses should, by and large, use RCM as a way to prepare for the worst and to make sure they always have back ups when they need them.
After all, when something goes wrong there's no reason that should make your business grind completely to a halt.
That's the fast road to losing all profits.
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