What is Reliability Centered Maintenance?

Written by Maintenance Care Team | Mon, Sep 29, 2025 @ 08:32 PM

What is Reliability Centered Maintenance?

Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM or RCM maintenance) is a maintenance strategy that is designed to ensure that key assets perform reliably, safely, and in a cost-effective way. The hallmark of RCM is analyzing the importance and vulnerabilities of each asset and optimizing its maintenance individually. In essence, RCM’s meaning can be summarized as “the right maintenance on the right asset at the right time.”

Where Did Reliability Centered Maintenance Originate?

Reliability centered maintenance began in the aviation industry. In the 1960s, the rate of failure in aircraft components accelerated, leading to more accidents. The industry realized that time-based maintenance was not as effective as needed. Subsequent studies led to changes in maintenance standards for the industry, which led to the development of RCM in the 1970s.

In the mid-1980s, the US military adopted reliability-based maintenance for naval aircraft, weapons systems and support equipment. In the 1990s, the practice was more widely adopted in utilities, manufacturing, and facilities management, and formal standards were set.

How Did Reliability Maintenance Change the Maintenance Process?

Studies into maintenance standards and schedules revealed that traditional practices were flawed. RCM maintenance used these insights to develop an entirely new approach.

Insight	Traditional Belief	Reliability Principle
Failures aren’t always caused by age.	Parts will wear out after X number of hours.	Most failures happen randomly; even a new part can fail.
Manage failure instead of lifespan.	Swap out parts before the end of their lifespan.	Focus on what happens when failure occurs, and how to minimize the impact (ex, design changes, monitoring, backup systems).
Focus on what users need, not what the design predicts.	Maintenance decisions are based on the design specifications.	Base maintenance decisions on whether the item works the way users need it to.
Use condition to guide maintenance.	Maintenance should be scheduled on the calendar.	Check the condition of the equipment with tools like vibration sensors, oil analysis, and temperature checks to spot early warning signs.
There are four basic maintenance task types.	The same maintenance approach should be used for all equipment, machines, and tools.	Maintenance approaches fall into four categories: Scheduled replacement Scheduled inspection Condition based Run to failure
Maintenance should be matched to acceptable risk.	The goal is zero failures.	No system can be failure-free. Focus on acceptable risk level to safety, costs, and operations.

RCM reliability centered maintenance revolutionized thinking in facilities and equipment maintenance. New practices are more intensive but focus on lowering overall risk and optimizing reliability. Modern CMMS tools facilitate implementation and keep monitoring of RCM maintenance on track.

How Does RCM Maintenance Differ from Preventive Maintenance, Predictive Maintenance, And Reactive Maintenance?

RCM includes predictive, preventative, and corrective maintenance; the overall approach of RCM is to determine what type of maintenance is best and to implement and monitor the maintenance system for each individual asset.

Preventive maintenance involves scheduled inspections, replacements, or adjustments to prevent failure and emergency repairs.

Predictive maintenance uses monitoring tools like vibration analysis, infrared scans, and oil sampling to predict failures before they happen.

Reactive or corrective maintenance happens after an asset fails. Think of it as an action rather than a strategy per se.

Run-to-failure is used for low-risk or low-cost assets such as light bulbs, tape guns, and non-critical hand tools.

RCM determines which of these approaches makes the most sense for each asset in terms of safety, uptime, and resource allocation, optimizing both reliability and maintenance resources.

Why Reliability Centered Maintenance Matters

Unplanned downtime is costly. It poses risks to profitability, safety, and even an organization’s reputation. RCM reliability centered maintenance helps minimize those risks by:

Improving uptime by detecting and preventing failures before they happen.

Reducing cost by eliminating unnecessary routine maintenance as well as expensive emergency repairs.

Increasing safety by detecting and correcting potentially hazardous failures.

Optimizing resource allocation by matching maintenance strategies to the role the asset plays in the organization (i.e. critical vs. non-critical).

How Does RCM Work?

A typical RCM maintenance program involves three phases: analysis, failure assessment, and implementation/monitoring.

RCM Analysis

Asset discovery: Define and identify all assets on hand, including everything on- and off-site, from essential production tools to peripheral equipment and low-cost hand tools.
Criticality analysis: Determine which assets are most important to operations, safety, and costs.
Define asset functions: Determine what each asset is supposed to do and what standards will be used to measure each asset’s performance.

Failure Assessment

Failure detection: Decide how failures will be identified, whether through sensors, condition monitoring, or manual inspection.
Probability of failure: Outline likely causes of failure, their frequency, and risk levels.
Analyze consequences of failure: Assess what happens if each asset fails, including production delays, safety risks, and financial implications.

Implementation and Monitoring

Choose the best maintenance strategy (preventive, predictive, corrective, run-to-failure)
Implement and monitor strategy: Enter assets and maintenance processes into a CMMS to ensure everything is documented, scheduled, and visible.
Perform root cause analysis: If an asset does fail, investigate why and correct the maintenance strategy for that asset.

Advantages and Disadvantages of RCM Maintenance

Advantages of RCM Maintenance

The “pros” of reliability centered maintenance include:

Cost savings from reduced downtime and fewer redundant maintenance tasks.
Improved safety for workers.
Better environmental compliance.
More coordinated management of maintenance issues.
Longer equipment life.

Challenges of RCM Maintenance

The downsides of reliability centered maintenance:

Higher upfront costs and resource investment.
Considerable time is required to analyze all failure modes.
Requires buy-in and participation across the organization.

Despite the higher initial costs, most organizations find that reliability centered maintenance pays for itself over time. However, ongoing commitment to this strategy and vigilant record-keeping is essential.

How CMMS Helps with RCM

Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) Software is the key to implementing and tracking an RCM maintenance program.

CMMS software performs these functions:

Stores an inventory of assets, asset-related documents and their maintenance history in a searchable database.
Automates work orders and schedules preventive or predictive maintenance tasks.
Tracks spare parts inventory and prompts reordering.
Helps create dashboards and reports on key data such as downtime, costs, and reliability stats.
Allows access to data by authorized personnel in real time.

CMMS software helps with RCM with these critical applications:

Ensures critical assets are tracked and maintenance is prioritized as per the previous asset criticality analysis.
Facilitates documentation of asset functioning, usage, and modifications.
Monitors asset performance so organizations can choose the right maintenance strategy (preventive, predictive, corrective, or run-to-failure).
Captures failure and root cause data for use in future RCN maintenance planning.

The best CMMS software makes RCM implementation smoother and more cost-effective. This software is critical to structuring implementation and facilitating initial buy-in and consistent adherence to an RCM program.

Reliability Centered Maintenance Example

This fictional example illustrates how RCM maintenance can lower costs and improve productivity even in a small factory.

The factory uses a small conveyor belt to move packaged goods from its production line to the loading dock. Without the conveyor, orders would be delayed, leading to dissatisfied customers and financial losses.

In this situation, RCM would earmark the conveyor belt as a critical asset. The process of implementing reliability centered maintenance would proceed in these steps:

Identify the conveyor belt’s functions (move boxes from the production line to the loading dock) and performance standards (operate continuously at 40 ft/min).

Identify possible failure modes. These might include:
- Belt misalignment or breakage.
- Motor burnout or overheating.
- Roller seizure due to lack of lubrication.
- Sensor failure.
- Electrical wiring fault.

Analyze the consequences of each failure mode:
- Belt failure: complete stoppage of the conveyor belt.
- Motor burnout: complete stoppage, expensive to replace, and may take time to replace.
- Roller seizure: can slow or completely stop the conveyor, causes wear and tear on the belt over time.
- Sensor failure: can cause slowdowns and delivery delays.
- Wiring fault: poses a safety hazard, can result in shutdowns.

Select the right reliability centered maintenance approach:
- Belts: Visual inspection every week; replace when wear indicators show problems are upcoming.
- Motor: Condition-based maintenance using sensors and scans. Scheduled lubrication every month.
- Rollers: Scheduled lubrication every week, replace seized rollers when problems arise.
- Sensors: Test monthly and recalibrate as needed.
- Wiring: Inspect every six months.

Implement and monitor
- Assign technicians to conduct scheduled maintenance and inspections.
- Use a CMMS to track maintenance schedules, log findings, track replacement part inventory, and keep technicians accountable.
- Track downtime and delay incidents and make changes to reliability centered maintenance where necessary.

This example illustrates that RCM maintenance can improve reliability even in a small enterprise. With the right CMMS, this process can easily be scaled up to much larger operations.

Reliability-Centered Maintenance

Reliability-centered maintenance now represents the gold standard of maintenance approaches in major industries, but it can be used in facilities of all sizes and complexities. Long-term safety enhancements, cost savings, and reduced downtime are just some of the benefits. Although it’s initially labor- and time-intensive, the right software tools make implementation orderly and accessible.

Get started with RCM maintenance with Maintenance Care’s award-winning CMMS software solutions. Contact us for help finding the right package for you. Learn about our pricing models and the industries we serve. Book a demo so we can show you how we make RCM maintenance work for your business.

About Maintenance Care

With Maintenance Care’s powerful CMMS platform, setting up and managing your preventative maintenance program has never been easier. From automated scheduling and mobile access to custom task views and real-time reporting, our software helps you stay ahead of facility-related issues to keep operations running smoothly and safely.

As your preventive maintenance program adapts to new standards and technologies, count on Maintenance Care to grow along with you. At the forefront of preventative maintenance software, we offer solutions that are scalable and designed to interface cleanly with predictive maintenance tools.

Whether you’re managing a recreational facility, a government complex, a transportation hub, or you’re a small business owner, Maintenance Care gives you the tools to coordinate your technicians, get the most out of your assets over the long term, and reduce unplanned downtime.

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