Preventing financial, environmental and safety related business losses caused by critical assets is undoubtedly the central role of reliability engineers, maintenance practitioners and the discipline of physical asset management.

Sooner or later, most companies that are serious about asset performance end up looking at the option of building a reliability department. My personal view is that ultimately, reliability should be like safety. It is everyone's job, it is threaded throughout the business, and there should be no need for a central policeman setting policy or doing the work for you. But ... that is a little bit utopian, I know.

I have ranted and raved about the curse of criticality here several times in the past. While criticality is very good for separating clients and their money, it's use for implementing reliability is somewhere between severly limiting and a fatal flaw..depending on the urgency your company has.

The recesion is like an outgoing tide, uncovering lots of ship wrecks in its wake. 

Half finished projects, cost overruns that were easily able to be hidden, and atrocious practices that were exceptionally useful when it was all about getting product out the gate - but they are suddenly a liability now that we are all focused inwards on cost control and shrinking profit margins.

It's easy to panic. Heck it is  a natural human reaction to panic and blame anyone near you who isn't panicking! At the very least it is hard to k now exactly where to start.

The continual debates and semantical posturing over the difference between maintenance and reliability engineering is one of the most astoundingly ridiculous debates to emerge in physical asset management in the last 10 years. 

Some people feel compelled to cut and paste role descriptions when we talk about this stuff, but it can be defined quite simply. Maintenance Engineering is about efficiency while Reliability Engineering is about effectiveness.

The BIG BANG approach to implementing reliability, trying to tackle multiple areas at once, is one of the surest ways to achieve mediocre results.

I have seen this far too many times recently. Companies get sold on the idea of a suite of products, or on a comprehensive (or holistic) approach, or some other form of "kill 'em all" approach to problem-solving. 

The problem is that there are not enough leaders, not enough sponsors, not enough technical experts and not enough corporate bandwidth to implement everything to the level of detail required.

Over the next few weeks I am going to be pushing as much value as I can do into this column. Like you I have watched as mining companies, auto manufacturers, plastics manufacturers and others have announced labor cut backs.

Even OPEC is screaming for international help stabilize the oil price.

This is not just commentary. A company my father works for is one of those that has been hit by this crisis so I am feeling this also.

1.    Start with value in mind.

Successful projects start with the value in mind. This is where we fail often. We use criticality as a means of defining value, when it really doesn’t do that at all.

If we do criticality properly, and that is doubtful often, then it will define our most important assets – not our greatest value.

Focus on the Value Quadrant. Most companies look for revenue first, then costs, then risk and then knowledge. Make sure to tie it to your own company’s views and what your management thinks.

There are a range of unsubstantiated myths floating around the maintenance discipline relating to RCM. I will try to address some of them in these pages at one time or another, but today I really want to look in detail at one of the most insidious of them.

Myth: RCM is only for Critical Assets

My feelings on criticality are clear. Many of us apply it without thinking it through. We think that "everybody does this, so it must be right". Yet the facts speak for themselves.

Dow Chemicalshas just announced that it is laying off around 5000 workers. The oil price hasdropped to around $43 per barrel and demand from Asiafor commodities has tailed off.

But wait – thereis even more good news for maintainers. Manufacturers are continuing tooutsource their operations. And technology is laying waste to entireindustries.