Issue 52, June 2005

When using RCM++ to compare the costs of various maintenance strategies, what types of maintenance actions can be considered?

RCM++ provides cost calculation methods for the following maintenance strategies:

• Run-to-Failure: Repair the equipment when it fails but do not perform preventive maintenance.

• Preventive Repair/Replace: Repair or replace the equipment on a scheduled basis. These are also referred to as "Hard Time," "Restoration" or "Discard" tasks.

• Service: Perform lubrication or other servicing activities on a scheduled basis.

• Failure-Finding Inspection: Perform an inspection on a scheduled basis to determine whether a hidden failure has occurred.

• On-Condition Inspection: Perform an inspection on a scheduled or continuous basis to detect a condition (e.g. wear, crack propagation, vibration, etc.) that indicates that a failure is approaching.

In addition, RCM++ allows you to distribute the cost of one-time tasks (e.g. an up-front design change, etc.) across the life of the equipment for comparison purposes. The task types that will be available for your analysis are set via the Tasks page of the Project Properties window. In order to estimate the costs for each maintenance strategy, the user must enter the operating time for the equipment, the probability for the cause of failure, the duration and cost for each corrective maintenance (CM) action and the duration and cost for the maintenance task being considered. Chapter 10 in the RCM++ User's Guide provides more information on this feature.

How can I use an action or a task more than once in my FMEA or RCM analysis?

Xfmea 3 and RCM++ offer linked actions, which provide you with the ability to use the same action in multiple locations within a project without having to re-enter the information. RCM++ also offers linked tasks, which provide the same ability for tasks. If you edit/update the original action or task record, all instances of the action or task will be updated.

To specify the master (or source) record for a linked action or task, click Add Linked Action in the Actions Manager window or, in RCM++, Add Linked Task in the Maintenance Task Manager window. The Set Source window will appear, as shown next for actions.

In this window, the properties of all available master actions or tasks in the current project are displayed. When you select one and click OK, the software creates the linked action or task, which is a dummy record representing the master record.

Chapter 7 in the Xfmea User's Guide and Chapter 8 in the RCM++ User’s Guide provide more information on linked actions and/or tasks.

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