NASA RELIABILITY CENTERED MAINTENANCE (RCM) GUIDE FOR FACILITIES AND COLLATERAL EQUIPMENT (FEB 2000)
NASA RELIABILITY CENTERED MAINTENANCE (RCM) GUIDE FOR FACILITIES AND COLLATERAL EQUIPMENT (FEB 2000)., Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) is the process that is used to determine the most
effective approach to maintenance. It involves identifying actions that, when taken, will reduce
the probability of failure and which are the most cost effective. It seeks the optimal mix of
Condition-Based Actions, other Time- or Cycle-Based actions, or a Run-to-Failure approach, as
shown in Figure 1-1. The principal features of each strategy are shown below their block in
Figure 1-1. RCM is an ongoing process that gathers data from operating systems performance
and uses this data to improve design and future maintenance. These maintenance strategies,
rather than being applied independently, are integrated to take advantage of their respective
strengths in order to optimize facility and equipment operability and efficiency while minimizing
life-cycle costs. The elements of RCM are developed in Chapter 2 and the maintenance
strategies are defined and discussed in Chapter 3.