Proactive Reliability Maintenance (PRM)

Proactive Reliability Maintenance (PRM) is what many see as the ultimate goal as a Maintenance Strategy, it is all about learning and improving how you operate and perform maintenance. With Condition Monitoring supporting a maintenance strategy it is the goal to highlight, plan for and to prevent failures before they occur, with no surprises along the way. However, with PRM it is taking your maintenance philosophy to the next step by asking “Why did that happen?” In other words implementing a change in attitude, learning on an ongoing basis, so that the initial cause of the predicted failure is removed in the first place. This could uncover anything from a deficit in training, incorrect operating procedures to poor quality products etc.

The best way to implement PRM is to perform a Root Cause Analysis (RCA) on every failure, predicted or not, review your exception reports for common trends, Bad Actors and the Mean Time Between Exception (MTBE) of an asset.

With PRM you will see an extended improvement in Reliability and Availability along with an increase in the bottom line and a reduction in unplanned maintenance activities.

Taking the Condition Based Maintenance (CBM), Predictive Maintenance (PdM), Preventive Maintenance (PM) and Run To Failure (RTF) example to the next stage:

An individual bought an incandescent light bulb. The manufacturing company mentioned that the life span of the bulb is 3 years. The individual has the opportunity to observe the bulb operation daily. After two years, the bulb starts flickering. The individual predicts at that time that the bulb is going to fail very soon and decides to change it for a new one, as such an order is placed to purchase a replacement one and it is installed. However the question now is Why did it fail? Especially as it only lasted 2 rather than the expected 3 years, an RCA is performed and it is realised that this light is not being switched off when people leave the room, unlike other rooms, it is then found that all other rooms have a notice requesting the light to be turned off on exit but this one hasn’t. A ‘turn the lights off’ notice is placed near the exit and 3 years later the bulb is still functioning. PRM has extended the life by at least 50%, reduced the cost of replacement bulbs by 50% along with a 75% reduction in energy usage. A win, win, win scenario.