RCM Study Size

Before starting an RCM quality check, it helps to first check the size of the study. The size of an RCM study relates to the number of Plants, Units, FLOCs and Equipment involved.

Checking the Size of the Study

You can use the overview below to get this insight:

Overview table showing counts of Plants, Units, FLOCs, and Equipment for the study.

Failure Modes per Object Type

From this overview, it's next of interest to see which RCM analyses have been done. This can be seen from the number of Failure Modes (FMs) in the FLOC Main Screen (Grid List) and Equipment Main Screen (Grid List):

FLOC list displaying location types and associated data for control valves.

This grid also shows where RSLs are used. Exporting the data lets you analyze the number of failure modes per location type — for instance, by creating a Pivot table in Excel:

Data table showing unit counts for various categories and their totals.

This pivot table shows a set of 139,790 FLOCs in the tool, where 129,599 do not have an FM, while 10,191 FLOCs do have one or more FMs.

Note

A table showing the number of failure modes per object type provides insight into the amount and spread of FMs involved in RCM and RSL analyses. This can flag underestimation or overestimation of equipment complexity. Looking at which FMs are actually studied versus which are not can help reveal differences in degradation.

FMs from RSL vs. RCM Analyses

You can split the table above to compare FMs originating from an RSL against FMs from a basic RCM analysis:

Two tables comparing FM counts that originate from RSLs against FM counts from RCM analyses.

The table on the left shows that 1,403 FLOCs have FMs originating from RSLs, and the table on the right shows that 8,788 FLOCs have FMs from RCM analyses. This also shows how the split works out across the various location types. Alongside FLOCs, the same analysis should include Equipment data, to show at which hierarchy level the analyses are performed.

Insight into the number of FMs gives an idea of the depth of FM determination per object type. This data can help estimate how many FMs are likely to be involved in a future RCM study, and how much time the study may take, per discipline.

FMs per FLOC or Equipment

To show the overall number of FMs per Floc/Eq, use an Excel pivot table showing Count of #FMs versus Sum of #FMs:

Excel pivot table showing count of units for various categories and settings.

This produces a column with the overall sum of FMs:

Pivot table result showing the total FM count per FLOC.

The picture above shows that roughly 10,000 FLOCs have about 15,000 FMs between them — an average of 1.5 FMs per FLOC, and a maximum of 4.2 FMs per FLOC for Analysers.

This data gives insight into the size, scope, and granularity of the study. Next, it's relevant to look at the quality of the analyses.