Reliability-Centred Maintenance Basics
The core logic of Reliability-Centred Maintenance (RCM) for maintenance and reliability professionals: defining functions and performance standards, analysing functional failures and failure modes, judging consequences, and selecting the right maintenance task for each failure mode.
48m
Total time
4
Competency levels
12
Lessons
What you'll learn
- Explain why RCM starts from what an asset must do — its functions and performance standards — rather than from the asset itself
- Distinguish functional failures, failure modes and failure effects, and describe each at a useful level of detail
- Classify failure consequences as safety/environmental, operational, non-operational or hidden, and explain why the category drives the maintenance decision
- Apply the RCM task-selection logic: condition-based first, then time-based, then failure-finding, with redesign or run-to-failure as defaults
- Explain why hidden failures on protective devices need failure-finding tasks and how test intervals are set
- Run and sustain RCM as a living programme that learns from operating experience, not a one-off study
Curriculum
Progress through each competency level in order.
1
Awareness
- 2mWhat RCM Asks: Functions and Performance StandardsKnowledge
- 2mFunctional Failures, Failure Modes and EffectsKnowledge
- 7mAwareness Check: RCM FoundationsAssessment
2
Knowledge
- 3mFailure Consequences: The Four CategoriesKnowledge
- 2mChoosing the Right Task: The Selection LogicKnowledge
- 8mKnowledge Check: Consequences and Task SelectionAssessment
3
Skill
- 2mRunning an RCM Analysis in PracticeKnowledge
- 3mAssignment: Mini-RCM on One AssetAssignment
- 7mSkill Check: Applying the RCM LogicAssessment
4
Mastery
- 2mRCM as a Living ProgrammeKnowledge
- 3mAssignment: Review and Update a Maintenance StrategyAssignment
- 7mMastery Assessment: Sustaining RCMAssessment
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