REDUCING MAINTENANCE WORKLOAD THROUGH RELIABILITY-CENTERED MAINTENANCE (RCM)

Recent work is bringing the benefits of Reliability Centered Maintenan ce (RCM) to the Fleet. In 1996, a one-time review of the existing sche duled maintenance program for eight MCM 1 class systems, using RCM pri nciples, reduced their PMS labor requirements by 56%, from 1,688 man-h ours per ship per year to 751. In the same year, a one-time RCM-based review for the CNO's Smart Ship Project reduced the Planned Maintenanc e System (PMS) labor requirements for all systems aboard USS Yorktown (CG 48) by 46%, from 46,540 man-hours per year to 25,108. Both reviews examined ships that had been in service for years. They asked three f undamental questions: Is there evidence of significant age degradation ? Does the task benefit the hardware? Does the task pay for itself-tha t is, are the benefits from the task greater than its costs? Each revi ew found many situations where the answer to one or more of these ques tions was, ''No.'' In many cases where an answer was ''no'', the task was retained with a longer periodicity Other tasks were shifted from ' 'scheduled maintenance'' to ''unscheduled maintenance'' or were delete d outright, further reducing annual workload. The next step is to spre ad these benefits to the rest of the surface fleet, through the Surfac e Ship Maintenance Effectiveness Review (SURFMER). in the SURFMER proc ess; each significant maintenance requirement for surface ships will b e reviewed periodically by the appropriate In Service Engineering Agen t (ISEA), using RCM principles. All decisions will be documented toget her with their rationale. The SURFMER process began in late 1996. Its first results will be implemented in October 1997.