Reliability Centred Maintenance

Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM) is the application of a structured method to fully understand a complex system and establish the optimum preventive maintenance for a given system, and identifies the maintenance tasks necessary to avoid any detrimental safety, environmental, availability or economic consequences. RCM can also identify all corrective maintenance tasks and their required support resources based on an integrated Failure Mode Effects and Criticality Analysis. The process is used to analyse new designs but can also be applied retrospectively to existing systems.

The RCM approach is to identify the following:

• The functions expected from an item
• How the item may fail
• The potential causes of that failure
• The potential effect, at various levels, of that failure
• The potential consequences of failure in terms of safety, environmental, operational, or economic impact

LSC Group has many years experience in RCM and associated activities. We have an established team of expert RCM practitioners who are trained and experienced in conducting RCM studies and are fully conversant with the content of, and implications of using, both UK MoD RCM standards (Defence Standard 02-45 and AP100C-22) as well as other RCM standards and approaches. This has allowed LSC Group RCM experts to provide organisations with the capability to:

• Identify justified maintenance task requirements allowing the elimination of unnecessary maintenance, and resulting in typical cost savings of between 15% and 30%
• Safely extend relevant maintenance task intervals, resulting in increases in system availability
• Rationalise maintenance requirements without adverse safety, operational or economic consequences

LSC Group has conducted a variety of RCM and stockholding analyses for a large number of UK MoD programmes, including Hunt and Sandown Class mine countermeasures, Type 23 frigates, HMS Ocean, Trafalgar and Vanguard Class nuclear submarines, future Assault Vessel project, Sea Harrier, Puma, Lynx, Islander, Chinook, VC-10, Nimrod, Harrier and flight refuelling equipment. We have also supplied RCM facilitators to prime defence contractors such as BAE SYSTEMS in support of Land and Sea Projects.

In addition, LSC Group has a proven track record for conducting MSG-3 preventive maintenance analysis, which is used throughout the air environment, to many organisations across a number of sectors and engineering environments.