In most CMMSs where an RCM functionality has been introduced, the Effects tend to be short single phrases rather than narratives as suggested in the Moubray and SAE JA1011 standard.
Effects according to the Moubray/JA1011 viewpoint include what happens at all levels in the organization and even beyond. Here is the JA1011 suggested content for Effects:
5.4 Failure Effects5.4.1 Failure effects shall describe what would happen if no specific task is done to anticipate, prevent, or detect the failure.
5.4.2 Failure effects shall include all the information needed to support the evaluation of the consequences of the failure, such as:
a. What evidence (if any) that the failure has occurred (in the case of hidden functions, what would happen if a multiple failure occurred)
b. What it does (if anything) to kill or injure someone, or to have an adverse effect on the environment
c. What it does (if anything) to have an adverse effect on production or operations
d. What physical damage (if any) is caused by the failure
e. What (if anything) must be done to restore the function of the system after the failure
The JA1011 Effects questions are best expressed as a narrative. Not all the questions listed apply to all situations. Other information may be relevant. A story encapsulates the relevant facts. The Effects provide the ideal opportunity to motivate people to “tell the story”. The story is the sequence of events surrounding the failure mode. Telling the story helps to elicit subtle yet important facts needed to establish the consequences (Question 5) and mitigating actions (Questions 6 and 7). The story makes the population of the data fields interesting and fun. Most importantly, the story makes it likely that the function, failure, failure mode, and consequences will have been selected correctly from drop down lists. Finally, the Event type (Potential Failure, Functional Failure, or Suspension) entry, indispensable for reliability analysis, is more likely to be accurate.
Stories are part of human evolution. For hundreds of thousands of years before the written word existed, information was passed from generation to generation with stories. It’s in our genes. Technicians, engineers, and all of us enjoy telling and reading stories. However, telling the story takes time, and time is always at a premium in maintenance. The LRCM process is designed to make the story quick and accessible, but still comprehensive according to the above JA1011 suggestions. We do this by displaying the full text of the RCM record in an ergonomic way. The image suggests a functional user interface to this end. At the same time we display the current work order and its textual content. It becomes easy to update the story given new insights revealed on the work order. Since we reference the RCM record it will no longer be necessary to reproduce the same knowledge on each work order’s free text commentary. It now becomes common knowledge that can be referenced, re-used, and continually refined.
© 2011 – 2018, Murray Wiseman. All rights reserved.
- Effects - alternate usages (48.3%)
- Free text on the work order (34.5%)
- Local, Next higher level, End effects (31%)
- Criticality analysis in RCM (17.2%)
- RCM boundaries and Living RCM (17.2%)
- FMEA according to Wikipedia (RANDOM - 13.8%)