Who are the thought leaders in reliability centered maintenance?

The idea of thought leadership may just seem like typical corporate-speak, but in reality, it’s an important component of our evolving business environment. According to Business News Daily, “a thought leader, or influencer, is someone whose expertise and perspective is valuable enough to offer guidance to those around them.”

In our corner of the world, several stand-out individuals have made significant strides in reliability-centered maintenance (RCM). Many of these professionals have taken RCM to the next level and developed integrations to key International Standards Organization (ISO) standards, as well as found ways to apply RCM more specifically to industrial businesses. Some have expanded areas, such as statistical analyses, to foster a more data-driven decision-making process. Here are the top thought-leaders in RCM today:

Marius Basson

Marius Bassonis the President of Aladon and The Aladon Network, a global community of industry professionals delivering reliability-based training and consulting services. He is an experienced engineering professional with more than 25 years’ experience in leading and implementing business improvement and reliability initiatives. Marius Basson outlines RCM3, which is a risk-based RCM process that elevates the need to manage a company's physical assets to the same level as other business management priorities. RCM3 builds on the popular RCMII methodology that began in the late 1990s, which was a more consequence-based process. RCM3 helps companies align with relevant ISO standards and results in a more integrated and holistic way to care for assets and reduce risk regarding physical equipment.

Doug Plucknette

Doug Plucknette is the founder of RCM Blitz® and author of the book Reliability Centered Maintenance using RCM Blitz®. He has delivered reliability training and services to numerous companies around the world, large and small, including such Fortune 500 companies as Cargill, Whirlpool, Honda, Coors Brewing, Energizer, Corning, Invista, and Newmont Mining

Doug Plucknette, a proponent of a step-by-step methodology called RCM Blitz, takes readers through a five-step program to better apply RCM principles. Plucknette starts with having businesses lay a solid foundation with upfront tasks that will help both facilitators and team members get off on the right foot. The second step involves looking at probability and consequences, which helps the company understand failure modes and prioritize RCM tasks. Plucknette moves on to the third step that focuses on discussing functions and functional failures before moving on to the heart of RCM, which identifies failure modes and effects, while developing solutions. The final step of RCM Blitz involves establishing and moving forward with follow-up tasks to continue improving reliability throughout an organization over the long haul.

Jesus Sifonte & James Reyes Picknell

Jesus Sifonte is Co-Founder and CEO of Conscious Reliability. He has lead many RCM and MRE projects for 100 fortune companies. James Reyes-Picknell is the Principal Consultant and Co-Founder of Conscious Asset. He specializes in the management of assets, maintenance, and reliability

Jesus Sifonte & James Reyes Picknell have come up with an optimized process for establishing RCM for the industry. They focus on the science of failures and the solutions that can enable long-term, sustainable, reliable operations. Sifonte and Picknell modified the original RCM program, which was developed for the flight industry, to be more applicable to industrial companies. They focus on looking at both the asset and failure modes in greater detail so that rigorous tasks are applied in only the most relevant spots. The authors also tie the RCM program to relevant industrial ISO standards and emphasize statistical analysis to encourage data-driven decisions.

Nancy Regan

Nancy Regan is the founder and President of The Force, Inc., a company dedicated to the implementation and promulgation of Reliability Centered Maintenance principles as they were originally intended. As a U.S. Navy civilian employee for seven years, she completed Naval Aviation Maintenance Officer School.  She then became Team Leader for RCM at the Naval Air Warfare Center, Aircraft Division, Lakehurst, NJ, where she instituted the RCM Program on Naval Aviation Common Support Equipment.

In 2001 she founded The Force, Inc.  Nancy has over 20 years of experience of hands-on practice facilitating RCM analyses, conducting RCM training, and assisting her clients in implementing RCM programs.

Nancy Reagan believes that the RCM process is critical to improving a company's asset management program. Her course walks participants through the RCM process, which includes seven steps. Reagan helps companies define functions, functional failures, and failure modes and effects. The course then goes through failure consequences including which failure modes are the highest priority and how they affect health, safety, environmental, operational and non-operational facets of a company. Reagan wraps up the training by discussing proactive maintenance and intervals, as well as default strategies.

Conclusion

Since RCM was first created by Nowlan & Heap in order to create minimum levels required for safety-related maintenance in the aviation industry, it has been a useful for those in the maintenance profession to find ways to improve productivity, reduce downtime, and boost compliance. Over the last several decades, top thought leaders in the industry have modified and improved the concept of RCM to make it more broadly applicable to manufacturers and industrial businesses.