Determining the return on investment from Reliability-centered maintenance is often a difficult thing to do. We so often get caught up in some of the myths out there on RCM that it is easy to lose sight of the fact that it remains the leading maintenance strategy development methodology in the world today.
Moubray, in his book RCM2, referred to the ability of RCM to get a reduction of between 20% and 70% of routine maintenance where there is an existing maintenance schedule in place. He stated this as a tangible benefit from RCM.
This immediately challenges one of the myths of RCM that we have tackled earlier in this Blog. That RCM should only be applied to critical assets. If we do not apply RCM widely, then we are not likely to get the full reduction in routine maintenance across the entire asset base.
There are always additional and intangible benefits such as the reduction of safety risk, or the reduction of risk to the environmental integrity of the assets. But there are also some more dramatic and tangible benefits available from most RCM implementations.
Have a look at the image below. This comes from the website of the Royal Australian navy and it details the benefits they have achieved from applying SAE compliant RCM throughout sections of their fleet.
