Examining the Processes of RCM and TPM:

RCM evolved during the 1950s in the aircraft industry as a result of a number of major reliability studies concerning complex equipment. In particular, the 1960 FAA / Airline Industry Reliability Program Study was initiated to respond to rapidly increasing maintenance costs, poor availability, and concern over the effectiveness of traditional time-based preventive maintenance. This, like several other initial studies, centred around challenging the traditional approach to scheduled maintenance programs which were based on the concept that every item on a piece of complex equipment has a ‘right age’ at which complete overhaul is necessary to ensure safety and operating reliability. Through these ‘reliability programs’ it was discovered that many types of failures could not be prevented or effectively reduced by such ‘right age’ overhauls no matter how intensively they were performed.