English

Abstract

Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) is the framework of preserving system functions, rather than preserving physical asset. RCM is used to evaluate planned maintenance schedule that will offers availability of equipment with both reliability and maintainability. This paper presents ABC Automobile Company case, where planned maintenance is possible with application of predictive maintenance strategy, which enables to take decision of maintenance action with evidence and reduce unneeded maintenance. The main principle of predictive maintenance is examining the important performance characteristics of equipment to select the most indicative parameters of condition which reflects functional failures. In proposals, vibration is selected as an important performance characteristic of rotating components. Through vibration monitoring several mechanical failures can be effectively predicted. Signals (such as through the use of vibration monitoring) emanating from the condition monitoring of equipment are frequently interpretative as per manufacturer’s recommendations, use of an expert system, or the threshold values established through the experience of inspectors are used (Wiseman and Jardine, 1999). The maintenance strategy adopted by ABC Automobile Company is preventive maintenance with manually collected condition monitoring data. That data usually indicates abnormality when actually failure occurs. This paper includes determination of the effectiveness of existing maintenance strategy and its comparisons with other strategies with improvement proposals. It outlines RCM analysis process and a test case of fans of paint booth process. This study concludes that RCM enables to evaluate planned maintenance action and incase of rotating components the vibration monitoring technique can be effectively used in predictive maintenance strategy. The paper reveals that the ABC Automobile Company can