Reliability Centered Maintenance for Noncoherent Systems

Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) is used by the majority of complex industries to identify maintenance requirements and optimize maintenance strategies. With RCM, an asset can be determined as preventive maintenance significant if its failure would degrade system performance. However, for noncoherent systems where component’s working condition can also contribute to system failure, which essentially goes against the principle of RCM, it has never been discussed what maintenance implications should be derived from an RCM analysis. This paper attempts to present the potential noncoherent issue in RCM through a simple industrial example. The developed RCM automation system is applied to analyze the noncoherent system. Implications on how a noncoherent RCM can be performed will be given.