John Moubray's RCM2™ reliability-based maintenance method

This article, aimed at readers with a basic knowledge of industrial maintenance, presents the origins, principles and characteristics of the RCM2/RCMII reliability-based maintenance method. This method was developed by John Moubray on the basis of the first RCM (Reliability-Centered Maintenance) method developed by Stanley Nowlan and Howard Heap in 1978 for the aeronautical industry. Following the publication of this method, John Moubray worked with Stanley Nowlan to adapt the initial approach to all industrial sectors. RCM2 is defined by John Moubray as a procedure for determining what needs to be done to ensure that any physical asset continues to achieve what the user desires in its current operating context. The first section presents the origins of his approach, which is intended to be highly pragmatic. The main definitions useful for understanding the RCM2 method have been extracted and translated from John Moubray's RCMII and form the content of the second section. It highlights the significant differences between the definitions used by RCM2 and those advocated in international standards, in particular for FMEA (Failure Mode and Effect Analysis). The reasons given by John Moubray for using specific definitions for RCM2 are based on his deliberate desire to use common language terms that are easily understood by maintenance practitioners. The third section covers the seven fundamental questions that need to be answered to obtain the initial RCM2 maintenance plan. These questions will be the subject of specific paragraphs and will concern: functions, modes, causes and consequences of failures. To determine maintenance tasks, other questions concern the importance of failure consequences, the possibility of predicting or preventing failures with proactive maintenance, and what can be implemented in the event that no proactive maintenance task can be used. To illustrate how a reliability-based maintenance study of the RCM2 type can be carried out, the case of a palletizing system with chain conveyors installed in a food carton manufacturing plant will be considered. The first part of the study presents the FMEA table specific to RCM2 to identify functions, functional failures, modes and consequences for the chain conveyor. Then, using the RCM2 decision logic tree, maintenance tasks are presented for the six failure modes of the first function and for the two failure modes associated with the second function. Intervals between maintenance tasks are also proposed.

As feedback from RCM2 implementations shows that it is used by thousands of users in over fifty countries, the final section is devoted to an analysis of the method, and highlights the importance of RCM2. Indeed, it now serves as the basis for many of the standards and recommendations on reliability-based maintenance methods...