Implementing RCM

recommendations An eternity or a
challenge?

By: Walter Nijsen
Asst. Maintenance and Reliability Leader
Cargill Grain and Oilseeds Europe

Doug J . Plucknette
RCM Discipline leader
GP Allied

Conducting a thorough RCM is an investment in
time and resources. When executed correctly,
however, it will bring value to your organization by
increased plant reliability, integrity and productivity.
To capture this value, it is vital to follow and
implement all the recommendations generated
during the RCM analysis.

While this may seemboth simple and logical, many
organizations are failing in this aspect, which can
turn the RCM implementation into an eternity.

How to turn this eternity into a challenge? To
answer to this question, we must first ask ourselves,
how do we plan to implement the tasks that came
out of our RCM analysis?

In the last years at Cargill, we have tried two
approaches:
- Single plant approach
- Company Corporate / Business Unit approach

Single Plant Approach
Looking back at dozens of analyses performed in
the past, we have used the plant approach most often
believing it to be best in terms of a 100 percent
guarantee of finding all failures modes, failure
causes and effects and defining your maintenance
strategy. During your RCM, you will have all the
local plant experts at the table, understanding the
operational context of this specific installed
equipment, understanding the current maintenance
strategy and a new detailed maintenance strategy
will be the result. With a fully engaged teamand
correct priority settings from the plant leadership
team, the probability for a successful
implementation and consequent results coming from
your RCM is high.

In reality, our experience suggests that not all
organizations are as successful in the
implementation as they should be. Several reasons
can make the single plant implementation last
forever, examples are;
- The reliability engineer accountable for the
implementation has no responsibilities for
engineering and operation, while a majority of
the recommendations need to be implemented
in these job families.
- No budget is created or set apart to implement
the spare part strategy.
- No clear timeline and expectations are set for
when and how many recommendations should
be implemented.
- Implementation tracking and reporting is not in
place.
- Priorities at the plant level are changing and
RCM implementations are forgotten and seen
as the flavor of the month.
- No implementation manager was assigned to
track and report implementation progress to
reliability leaders.

The last consideration when using a single plant
approach are the resources required to performthe
RCM analysis while performing your day to day
plant activities. Conducting a RCM will take on
average about a week and in performing this event
we will need to take some experts out of the daily
plant operations. This time and resources investment
is not always easy to make and often results in
interruptions in the RCM schedule. These single
plant analyses often result in performing RCM on
similar assets at multiple sites and while the
outcome will be a maintenance strategy that is
specific to your asset, nearly 75 to 85 percent will be
identical.

A plant approach (an RCM on a specific
process/system/asset) is appropriate where the
consequence of failure dictates this (nuclear,
airplanes, etc)

The single plant approach maybe the only correct
approach to choose while the operational context
needs to be evaluated for each failure mode.

Company Corporate / Business Unit approach
Within less hazardous processes or the more
common industry, a Business Unit (BU) approach
can be a more efficient and effective approach.

The Company Corporate approach is based on
conducting a single RCM for a common asset that
can be used globally across the entire organization.
Within Cargill Europe Oilseeds Business Unit, this
has now been in place for two years with success.

In the BU approach a common asset is selected
using a short criticality evaluation on a BU level to
determine which asset is critical for the business
based on safety, food safety, operation and customer
impact. After this selection, the following questions
are being asked:

- Do these assets have a similar operational
context?
- Are the equipments basic functions common
and do they have the same Original Equipment
Manufacturer?
- Have there been any failures the prior years
with un-expected consequence which has
impacted the business?

Within Cargill Oilseeds Europe, six systems were
selected using mentioned criteria.

With support and sponsorship from the BU
operational leaders a RCM Blitz team was setup to
conduct a RCM Blitz analysis on a BU level.

Such a BU RCM teamwill be led by a certified and
qualified RCM facilitator and note taker including a
BU Maintenance and Reliability leader or
operational leader. The RCM teammembers are a
group of experts from different disciplines
(operations, maintenance, engineering, safety) from
several locations and each teammember is a highly
respected among their peers for their knowledge of
the selected asset.

Before the RCM starts, the teammembers need to
be prepared and understand their roles and
responsibilities in the team. Preparation is done by
virtual training on RCM Blitz concepts and having
the participants collecting the failure history for the
asset at their plant site.

After the preparation, the RCM team gathers
together at a selected plant and spends a full week
on the RCM study without getting disturbed by day
to day business or other call outs. During this RCM,
not only the plant specific operational context is
evaluated but also the operational context and
failure modes fromother locations. Experience has
shown that this will produce about 5 to 15 per cent
more failure modes than a site specific RCM
analysis. After the completion of the RCM study, a
specific implementation tasks list is created and
sorted by priority and assigned to specific functions.

The final RCM analyses and implementation tasks
list is owned by the BU reliability leader and
updated when needed. The BU reliability leader
distributes the RCM implementation list to the
reliability leaders at the site and requested the
operational context, failure modes and effect to
analyze and compare with their plant / system. We
have learned that about 95 percent is common and
for about 5 percent failure modes need to be
adjusted.

What are the benefits of the Business Unit
approach?
As stated before, having the experts from the whole
organization together is a significant benefit. We
have experienced different views on failure
probability where one location has never noticed a
failure mode occurring, other locations have had it
several times. This triggers a different priority
setting on the implementation task, but also this
experience is brought into the RCM with multiple
implementations and recommendations to follow up.

Another benefit is the design review during the
RCM study. The principle of RCM is to identify all
functions (components) of an asset as it is in current
state. When getting experts on the table, having the
same installation for decades on their plants you can
imagine some installations have had design reviews
and improvement installed as a results of
experiences in the past. These design reviews and
additional functions are brought in discussed and
evaluated. This would never have happened when
only looking to the asset of one single plant. A
smart person once said; you do not know what you
do not know. We found this to be true as we
gathered our experts for the RCM analyses and
discovered several plants had made some significant
design changes to our assets, some were successful
and some were not.

What makes the probability of successful
implementation higher with a BU approach?
The answer to this question is very simple:
competition and the desire to be successful!

Lets explain. By the time we began performing
RCM analyses at the BU level, we had some
experience using the single plant approach.
Looking back at these analyses, we noted that those
that were implemented resulted in improved
reliability. Understanding this, we understood that
we must focus on building a successful
implementation plan; we started this by getting
RCM on the Dashboard at the BU level by tracking
and showing implementation status site by site. The
hope here was to clearly show where we were
implementing RCM tasks and where we were
struggling to implement.

Imagine you are a Reliability Engineer at a single
plant and have conducted a single plant approach
RCM. You are assigned as the responsible and
accountable person to implement the tasks. You
struggle to get it implemented at different job
families; however, you are afraid to report the
implementation status: 1
st
it makes you look a bad
leader not able to implement, 2
nd
if you would report
your implementation status what is your reference
point? Forty percent implemented in four month is
this a good result? Or should it be 80 percent? At a
certain moment, you will lose momentum and the
risk could be an implementation slow down or even
stop.

Within Cargill, we have seen this happening and for
this reason we changed to the cross functional
approach. Now imagine youre the same Reliability
Engineer still responsible and accountable for
implementing the RCM recommendation; however,
you are asked on a quarterly basis to report the
implementation status for all critical failure modes
and total failure modes to the BU Reliability Leader.
The implementation status per plant is embedded in
the BU balanced score card as a leading key
performance indicator. The person selected to track
the implementation progress site to site is identified
at the RCM Implementation Manager.

This balanced score card is communicated and
shown at several levels in the organization and it
will help to clarify what an acceptable
implementation status per period should be. On top
of this, the RCM implementation score are in the
site management objectives set by BU management.
A second effect of this tracking and publishing these
figures is a very positive one; it reinforces a desired
behavior!

Everybody wants to be in the leading group; why
can they make it and us not.
What do we need to do to get the same results?

As said BU management sponsorship is vital to
enforce the importance of the RCM
implementations in Cargill Oilseeds is stated; Any
failure on a RCM evaluated asset, resulting in high
downtime is unacceptable, will be reported and
investigated.

The RCM implementation becomes now an
organizational objective driven by the local
reliability engineer supported by the local
management team

This tracking and reporting can be achieved without
any sophisticated tools, just an excel overview with
a standard format for all sites including: failure
mode, implementation tasks, responsible person and
implementation status (not started, in progress,
complete)
The BU Score Card is a compilation of all these
sheets.

An example of a BU RCM score card:

Pl ant A 93% 95%
Pl ant B 92% 82%
Pl ant C 92% 95%
Pl ant D 91% 93%
Pl ant E 89% 90%
Pl ant F 83% 88%
Pl ant G 77% 79%
Pl ant H 73% 63%
Pl ant I 70% 80%
Pl ant J 68% 71%
Pl ant K 62% 38%
Pl ant L 59% 68%
Pl ant M 41% 39%
Pl ant N 30% 29%
Pl ant O 20% 19%
Pl ant P 17% 18%
Pl ant Q 12% 11%
Pl ant R 12% 9%
Pl ant S 0% 0%
Pl ant T 0% 0%
BU OVERALL 54% 53%
RCM implementation Score Card
Cri ti cal
Impl ementati on
Tasks
Overal l
Impl ementati on
Tasks

Fig 1. RCM Score card


Are we successful?
Looking at the score card for this specific analysis,
can we say that as a BU we have achieved good
performance in terms of overall BU implementation
performance?

No

Can we say that we been successful at all?

It depends on how you look at it. The score card
shows it is possible to implement 110 RCM
recommendations (>90% score with the
understanding that some implementation tasks may
not apply depending on design differences),
however only 5 out of 20 (25percent) of the
locations have achieved this.

Fifty percent of the plants have an implementation
score between 20 and 90 percent.

And sad but true 25 percent did not make any
progress.

So, yes we have been successful at some sites and
these sites are seen as leaders in terms of RCM
implementation. As a result, we look closely at
these sites to understand the behaviors that resulted
in completing their implementation and ask that
they share tips and suggestions to plants that are
lagging or struggling to implement.

This normal distribution and variance of the
implementation results is not a surprise; you will
always have some leading, a majority in the middle
and some lagging plants. It takes relentless
leadership and support to have all plants above 80
percent implementation score.
The BU reporting and tracking helps, however, to
get the organization moving but also determines
when you are ready for new RCM implementations.

Final point for attention is that having a reporting
and tracking system in place is not a guarantee for
success. It is simply a tool by which to track the
behavior of implementing tasks and managing the
RCM process. Experienced practitioners of RCM
understand that a process for analyzing the correct
deployment and execution of the RCM tasks needs
to be in place if you desire successful results; it is all
about flawless execution!

Acronyms:
RCM: Reliability Centered Maintenance
OEM: Original Equipment Manufacture
BU: Business Unit

1
How to Manage RCM Implementations
across multiple sites
Walter Nijsen and
Doug Plucknette
Track 2 Manufacturing Process
Reliability
Content
About RCM
Single plant approach
Business Unit approach
Score and tracking
Conclusion
Question and Answers
About RCM
Conducting a RCM is easy, if you have the
experts at the table and you follow the process
correctly the result is a maintenance strategy
covering all failure modes
Conducting a RCM is easy, if you have the
experts at the table and you follow the process
correctly the result is a maintenance strategy
covering all failure modes
Key for success is implementing all the
recommendations and follow-up from the RCM
Key for success is implementing all the
recommendations and follow-up from the RCM
Implementing RCM recommendations can be
hard to do and end up as an eternity
Implementing RCM recommendations can be
hard to do and end up as an eternity
From eternity to challenge
Start with the correct RCM approach for
your organization:
Single Plant Approach
Company corporate or Business Unit
Approach
Track and measure implementations
Single plant approach
Advantage:
Having all experts from the plant at the
table
Fully understand operational context
Easy to determine gap between current
maintenance strategy and RCM outcome
However..
Single plant approach
Single plant approach
Possible causes for despair and giving up:
Implementation needs to be done at multiple
job families
No clear timeline and milestones are set
No tracking in place
No budget set for implementation
Priorities changes; Flavor of the month
No responsible person to implement and
report
Business Unit approach
Systems selected by:
Do the assets have a similar operational
context?
Are the equipments basic functions common
and do they have the same OEM?
Have there been any failures the prior years
with un-expected consequence which has
impacted the business?
Business Unit approach
Selecting your RCM Team members
Certified RCM facilitator
Certified and experienced note taker
Well respected and experienced operations /
engineering / maintenance / safety experts.
Business unit reliability or operational leader
Business Unit approach
Execution:
Good preparation is important
Training on RCM concept done upfront
Meeting room and place well prepared
Note taker key role
Respect each other and have fun!
Outcome:
Common RCM recommendations ready for
implementing for all plants
Business Unit approach
Benefits compared to single plant
approaches:
You dont know, what you
dont know
You dont know, what you
dont know
Business Unit approach
What makes the probability of successful
implementation higher with a BU
approach?
Competition and desire to
be successful
Competition and desire to
be successful
Business Unit approach
Get RCM on the dashboard at business
unit level:
Track and reported RCM implementations
Make RCM implementations a leading
indicator at the balance score card
Report all failures on a RCM conducted
process
Have RCM as a site management objective
set by BU leaders
Business Unit approach
Results:
People want to be in the leading group I want
what they have! (Leaders see results first)
Reference point is set, what is a reasonable
score in what time frame
Brutal facts, maybe my overall lagging results
are not so good.but I focused on the correct
actions!
Score and Tracking
Very simple to achieve:
Standardized excel sheet for implementation
template
Report on a quarter basis % critical and %
overall implementation
Compile in 1 overview and report through
several levels in the organization
Implementation is a behavior and leading
indicator
Score and Tracking
FFM Pri orit y Task 1 Resp Person St at us
1- 1- 1 H- H Feed gas pi pi ng - Perf or m NDT every
5 years
Pl anner compl et ed
1- 5- 7 H- H Pr essur e Gauge - Devel op i nspecti on
f or co mpari ng pr essur e gauge wit h
pr essur e tr ans mitt er, r eport
Pr oducti on
Supervi sor
compl et ed
1- 5- 18 H- H Pi pi ng and Boil er i nsull ati on - set up
oper at or r ounds f or i nspecti ng
i nsull ati on conditi on and r epai r wher e
Pr oducti on
Supervi sor
i npr ogr ess
1- 1- 2 M- H Feed gas pi pi ng - I nspect if pr oper
guar di ng i s i n pl ace, col or pai nt ed as
r egul ati ons, and cl ear l abel ed
Mai nt enance
Manager
not st art ed
Score and Tracking
L M H
L LL 4 LM 3 LH 1
M ML 3 MM 2 MH 1
H HL 2 HM 1 HH 1
RCM failure matrix
Consequence
P
r
o
b
a
b
i
l
i
t
y
Score and Tracking
RCMScor e Car d criti cal t asks
Pl ant A
%co mpl et ed Tasks 1 40. 3 %
%co mpl et ed Tasks 2 24. 1 %
%co mpl et ed Tasks 3 62. 5 %
Cri ti cal I mpl e ment ati on scor e 42. 3 %
RCMScor e Car d over all t asks Pl ant A
%compl et ed Tasks 1 86. 1 %
%compl et ed Tasks 2 34. 5 %
%compl et ed Tasks 3 62. 5 %
Over al l I mpl e ment ati on scor e 61. 0 %
Pl ant A 93% 95%
Pl ant B 92% 82%
Pl ant C 92% 95%
Pl ant D 91% 93%
Pl ant E 89% 90%
Pl ant F 83% 88%
Pl ant G 77% 79%
Pl ant H 73% 63%
Pl ant I 70% 80%
Pl ant J 68% 71%
Pl ant K 62% 38%
Pl ant L 59% 68%
Pl ant M 41% 39%
Pl ant N 30% 29%
Pl ant O 20% 19%
Pl ant P 17% 18%
Pl ant Q 12% 11%
Pl ant R 12% 9%
Pl ant S 0% 0%
Pl ant T 0% 0%
BU OVERALL 54% 53%
RCM implementation Score Card
Cri ti cal
Impl ementati on
Overal l
Impl ementati on
Are we successful?
Conclusion
Choose the correct approach
Get RCM implementation on the dash
board of management team
Track and communicate results
Have flawless execution!
Contact
Walter Nijsen, CMRP
Cargill Europe
Walter_Nijsen@Cargill.com
Doug Plucknette, RCM Discipline Leader
GPAllied
Plucknetted@alliedreliability.com