Glossary

RCM (reliability-centred maintenance)

In short

Reliability-centred maintenance, or RCM, is a structured method for deciding the right maintenance strategy for each asset based on how it can fail, the consequences of those failures, and which tactics actually prevent or detect them. Rather than maintaining everything the same way, RCM matches the effort to the failure mode, so critical assets get the attention they need and low-consequence ones are not over-maintained.

RCM (reliability-centred maintenance)

Reliability-centred maintenance, or RCM, is a structured method for deciding the right maintenance strategy for each asset, based on how it can fail, what those failures lead to, and which tactics actually prevent or detect them. The core insight is that not every asset deserves the same treatment. Some failures are dangerous or expensive and justify careful, frequent attention; others are minor and might be cheaper to simply fix when they happen. RCM matches the effort to the failure mode.

How RCM works

RCM works through a sequence of questions applied to each asset and each way it can fail. What is the asset meant to do? How can it fail to do that? What causes each failure? What happens when it fails, and what are the consequences for safety, the environment, operations and cost? And then the decision: is there a maintenance task worth doing to prevent or detect this failure, and if so, what kind?

The honest part of RCM is that the answer is not always more maintenance. The right tactic might be a scheduled overhaul, a condition-monitoring check, a redesign to remove the failure mode, or, for a minor and cheap-to-fix component, a deliberate decision to run it to failure rather than spend money preventing something that does not matter. The method gives you a defensible reason for each choice.

What it tells you

A team that has worked through RCM ends up with a maintenance plan where the effort is concentrated where failures hurt and pared back where they do not. That tends to mean fewer high-consequence failures, less wasted maintenance on assets that did not need it, and a clear rationale you can point to when someone asks why a given asset is maintained the way it is.

RCM leans on two related ideas. It uses FMEA, failure modes and effects analysis, to identify and rank how an asset can fail, and it uses criticality analysis to decide which assets warrant the deepest treatment. Together they turn a vague sense that some equipment matters more into a structured plan.

How it relates to Cohiva Control

Cohiva Control does not decide your maintenance strategy for you, but it is where an RCM-derived plan lives and runs. Once RCM has told you the right tactic for an asset, you set it up in Cohiva Control: time-based or meter-based preventive maintenance for scheduled tasks, inspections for condition checks, with a failed item raising a work order automatically. Each asset carries its own configuration, so high-criticality assets can be maintained more intensively than low-consequence ones, exactly as RCM intends. The append-only audit trail of work orders and asset events gives you the failure history that feeds the next review of the plan, since RCM is not a one-off exercise. See FMEA, criticality analysis and preventive maintenance for the connected ideas.

Part of the Cohiva platform

Cohiva Control is part of the Cohiva platform. Leisure operators often run it with Cohiva Complex, and finance teams connect it to Cohiva Crunch for the general ledger. Explore the platform at www.cohiva.app.

Frequently asked questions

What question does RCM answer?
For each asset and each way it can fail, RCM asks what the failure does, what its consequences are, and what maintenance tactic, if any, is worth doing to prevent or detect it. The answer might be a scheduled task, a condition check, a redesign, or in some cases running to failure deliberately.
How does RCM relate to FMEA?
FMEA, failure modes and effects analysis, is the structured way RCM identifies how an asset can fail and what each failure leads to. RCM uses that analysis to decide the maintenance strategy, so FMEA feeds the RCM decision.
Is RCM the same as criticality analysis?
They are related. Criticality analysis ranks assets by the consequence and likelihood of failure so you know where to focus, and RCM then works out the right tactic for the high-priority ones. Criticality tells you where to look; RCM tells you what to do.
Is RCM only for large industrial sites?
It started in industries with high failure consequences, but the thinking, match the maintenance tactic to how an asset fails and what that costs you, applies anywhere with a mix of critical and minor equipment.