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Steps to assess RTF as Maintenance Strategy

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RTF (Run-to-Failure) is a Maintenance Strategy that is usually required whenever an asset is not working i.e. failure occurred. Here, assets can be equipment, component, parts of equipment. RTF is triggered as soon as the asset breaks down. RTF is a strategy that requires a better understanding of how an asset can break or how failure occurs and what are consequences or negative impacts of breakdown or failure on the overall system, health and safety, production, overall cost, etc. RTF should be applied to assets that are less critical and severe. But when it is implemented on appropriate and applicable assets, RTF saves time, money and also increases productivity. 

Steps to assess RTF : 
Before performing RTF, one needs to analyze assets individually and focus on each and everything that is associated with a particular asset. One should know how a particular asset supports the production and growth of the organization as well as the main goal and objectives of the organization. There are basically three main steps that help one to analyze asset as given below – 

 

  1. Cost of an Asset, both to Purchase and to Replace : 
    One should know how expensive a particular asset is. One needs to know how much cost will be required to replace it if it gets failed. There are several assets that are very expensive and require a greater cost to repair or replace after failure whereas the cost required to implement preventive maintenance before failure is less. In such cases, it is much expensive to perform RTF maintenance than to perform preventive maintenance. 

    There are other assets also for which implementing RTF maintenance is less expensive than implementing preventive maintenance. It also depends on the availability of spare parts and their cost. Some parts that are required to repair particular assets are very cheap and some are very costly. RTF is good in cases where spare parts are cheap and are easily available. Therefore, one needs to fully analyze costs associated with a particular asset before implementing any maintenance strategy. 

     

  2. Labor Cost associated with a Particular Asset : 
    Labor cost simply means the cost of employees or labor used in an organization or business. One needs to know the labor cost associated with a particular asset before performing RTF. Labor costs required to repair it or labor costs required to replace it are to main things one should know. 

    There are several assets that require fewer labor costs to replace or repair after failure rather than labor costs to prevent it from failure. Sometimes, preventive maintenance strategy requires more labor costs to prevent assets whereas RTF maintenance requires fewer labor costs to replace or repair them. So, in simple words, one should know labor costs for – 

    • Performing preventive maintenance before failure occurrence. 

       

    • Labor costs associated with replacement of particular asset after its failure or breakdown. 

       

    • Labor costs associated with impairment of particular asset after its failure or breakdown. 

       

  3. Downtime and Other Costs associated with Failure of an Asset : 
    Downtime cost simply means the cost required to fix damages to other assets that have been occurred as a result of an asset malfunction or failure. Every organization’s goal is generally to improve efficiency by increasing asset uptime, optimizing maintenance, and reducing cost. Downtime is simply the greatest source that leads to lost production time. 

    Nowadays, asset downtime and asset failure are some of the greatest costs that organizations face. One needs to know secondary damages that might occur due to the primary failure of the asset. Sometimes, secondary damages are much more critical, more costly, and have more consequences than primary asset failure. Therefore, one needs to understand for every asset under consideration that what downtime costs. This will help one to figure out the overall costs associated with performing RTF for each and every asset that is under consideration. 

     

 


Last Updated : 09 Feb, 2022
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