Reliability Centered Maintenance Services
Build the Right Maintenance Strategy for Every Asset
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Reliability centered maintenance services is a structured approach for determining the most effective maintenance strategy for an asset based on how it can fail, the consequences of failure, and the risk that failure creates for the business.
Rather than applying the same preventive maintenance philosophy across all equipment, RCM helps organizations determine where preventive, predictive, condition-based, operator-driven, redesign, or other maintenance strategies are appropriate.
Implementation Engineers works directly with maintenance, reliability, engineering, and operations teams to implement RCM—from asset criticality and failure-mode analysis through maintenance strategy development, PM/PdM optimization, CMMS integration, and ongoing reliability improvement through proven RCM implementation.
Perform the right maintenance on the right assets at the right time—based on risk and how the equipment actually fails.
What We Implement
Asset Criticality
Determine which assets create the greatest operational risk.
IE establishes a consistent process for evaluating asset criticality based on the consequences of failure, including production, safety, environmental, quality, and financial impacts.
Criticality helps determine where deeper reliability analysis is warranted and where maintenance resources should be concentrated.
Failure Mode Analysis
Understand how critical assets can fail.
IE works with maintenance, operations, engineering, and reliability subject matter experts to identify asset functions, potential failures, failure modes, causes, and consequences as part of thorough RCM analysis.
Depending on the application, this can include FMEA or simplified FMEA (sFMEA) to systematically identify failure risks and determine where existing maintenance strategies have gaps.
Risk-Based Maintenance Strategy Development
Determine the appropriate response to each failure mode.
This is the heart of RCM.
Once failure modes and consequences are understood, IE helps determine the most appropriate maintenance strategy.
Depending on the failure behavior and risk, that can include:
Preventive Maintenance | Predictive Maintenance | Condition-Based Maintenance | Operator Care | Inspection | Redesign | Run-to-Failure
The goal isn’t to maximize preventive maintenance.
It’s to select the maintenance approach that appropriately manages the risk at the lowest practical lifecycle cost and forms an effective RCM maintenance strategy.
PM/PdM Optimization
Challenge existing maintenance tasks against actual equipment risk.
IE evaluates existing preventive and predictive maintenance activities against asset criticality and identified failure modes.
Tasks may be eliminated, consolidated, redesigned, reassigned, or adjusted in frequency, while new strategies are developed for failure modes that are not adequately addressed.
Reliability Analytics & Failure Trend Analysis
Use maintenance data to continuously improve asset strategies.
IE analyzes work-order and equipment history to identify recurring failures, chronic “bad actors,” dominant downtime causes, and opportunities to improve maintenance strategies.
This can include:
Data Normalization → Pareto Analysis → Bad Actor Analysis → Failure Trend Analysis → Weibull Analysis → PM Evaluation
Root Cause Analysis & Continuous Improvement
Feed what you learn from failures back into the asset strategy.
Even the strongest maintenance strategy will evolve as equipment ages, operating conditions change, and new failure information becomes available.
IE implements Failure Trend Analysis and Root Cause Analysis processes to identify recurring problems and determine whether maintenance strategies need to change.
CMMS/EAM Integration
Turn the RCM strategy into executable maintenance work.
RCM has little value if the resulting strategy remains in an analysis or spreadsheet.
IE translates optimized asset strategies into the organization’s CMMS/EAM so new or revised PM/PdM tasks, frequencies, job plans, inspection requirements, and other maintenance activities become part of normal work execution as part of the full reliability centered maintenance process.
We don’t stop at determining what the maintenance strategy should be. We implement it.
Why Reliability Centered Maintenance Matters
More Maintenance Does Not Necessarily Create More Reliability
Maintenance programs frequently evolve over years. Manufacturer recommendations are loaded into the CMMS, additional PMs are created after failures, frequencies are adjusted, and historical tasks continue to be performed because “that’s how we’ve always done it.”
The result can be a large preventive maintenance program without a clear connection between the work being performed and the failure modes it is intended to prevent.
RCM changes the question from:
“What maintenance should we perform on this equipment?”
to:
“How can this asset fail, what happens if it does, and what is the most appropriate strategy for managing that risk?”
That shift allows organizations to reduce unnecessary maintenance while strengthening protection of the assets and failure modes that matter most.
IX® in Action | North American Baked Goods Manufacturer
A leading North American baked-goods manufacturer was experiencing significant unplanned maintenance and unreliable manufacturing equipment, disrupting production and limiting resource efficiency.
IE implemented a Reliability Centered Maintenance program as part of a broader Asset Performance Excellence transformation to move the organization from reactive maintenance toward a more proactive, risk-based reliability strategy.
IE developed asset criticality processes and tools to prioritize equipment based on business risk. Simplified FMEA processes were then implemented to identify failure modes and build asset strategies around how critical equipment could fail.
Based on the analysis, IE developed risk-based asset maintenance strategies and optimized the preventive maintenance process to better maintain equipment at its functional operating level. Failure Trend Analysis and a structured Root Cause Analysis program were also implemented to identify recurring problems and continuously improve asset strategies.
35%
Reduction in Breakdown Work
50%
Improvement in Scheduled Work
Frequently Asked Questions
What does an RCM implementation include?
An RCM implementation typically includes asset criticality prioritization, failure mode analysis (often using FMEA), risk-based maintenance strategy development, PM/PdM optimization, CMMS integration, and processes for continuous improvement through failure trend and root cause analysis.
How is RCM different from FMEA?
FMEA is a tool used to identify failure modes, causes, and effects. RCM is the broader process that uses failure mode analysis (including FMEA) to select the most appropriate maintenance strategy for each failure mode based on risk and consequences.
Which assets should be prioritized for RCM analysis?
Assets that create the greatest operational risk—those whose failure would significantly impact safety, environment, production, quality, or cost—should be prioritized for RCM analysis.
Related Maintenance & Reliability Services
- Maintenance Work Management
- CMMS Optimization
- MRO Materials Management
- Operator Driven Reliability
- Failure Modes Effects Analysis (FMEA)
- Root Cause Analysis
- Reliability Engineering
- Asset Management System Development
- Shutdown & Turnaround Improvement
- Asset Integrity Diagnostics
- Asset Criticality Analysis
- PM Optimization
- Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM)
- Predictive Maintenance & Condition-Based Maintenance (CBM)
- Mechanical Integrity Programs
- Maintenance Management Operating System (MMOS)
- Maintenance Organizational Effectiveness