What's the Difference Between RCM and TPM?

Hello Mickel,

I am not sure about TPM but RCM is used by the military mainly. It is a way of identifying the maintenance resources, i.e., time to repair, spares required, skill levels and all sorts of resources that might not easily be to hand. It is based on a "measure" of the reliability of the article to be maintained which in turn depends on all the bits that make up the article. The reliability is determined from a Reliability Study. It is not exact science but does indicate what is likely to go wrong first and the maintenance resources are based on what is most likely to fail. Its great fun.

An excellent book on the subject of maintenance is "Uptime" by John Dixon. It has individual chapters on the maintenance theories and their applications.

TPM or Total Preventive Maintenance. That's a program that starts out by almost rebuilding the machine. I used to be "the man" for TPM in my last company.

The first thing you do with a TPM project is to order all the parts you need to completely rebuild the equipment. Then rebuild it. Establish hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and yearly schedules to maintain the equipment. The reason you do TPM is to achieve 100% up time. 100% means the equipment is never down when you need it. Think about a factory where all the equipment is running every minute you need it. A true cost saver and increases production by not having any machine down time. The key word is PREVENTIVE.

Total Preventive Maintenance is focused on periodically rebuilding machinery so it will,with high certainty, run without failure, until the next rebuild.

For instance, when I was young and living on a rice farm in Louisiana, we used to 'rebuild' our combines every summer before the start of harvest season, with the intention they would not require any major repairs during the season. Bushings that had some play were renewed, belts replaced, any 'not as new' or 'not certain if it would make the season' component was renewed. We had about 3 hours every morning to service (grease everything, fuel, adjust belts,chains,etc)and do minor repairs.

Then parts prices shot up 2-3 fold and we switched to repair on condition--instead of replacing/rebuilding everything, we began replacing 'on condition'. Components that would take a lot of time to replace (more than 4 hours down time) were checked every few days for deterioration and replacement scheduled near end of expected life, prior to failure. We did experience a few periods of unexpected 'downtime', but reduced replacement parts cost (and associated labor)by 75%!! This was Reliability Centered Maintenance--we checked every morning those things that would be lengthy to repair or had potential collateral damage and planned timely repair before failure, and also increased daily 'inspections' and lubrication to two times/day. In five seasons of 'RCM', my machine had 2 breakdowns, neither of which would have been prevented by TPM. One was a broken main axle (slow fatigue crack propagation at peak bending moment support bearing inside the gearbox) that was an all day affair, the other a bent reel drive-shaft caused by a big woody weed lodging in a chain sprocket causing the chain to get (way) excessively tight and bending both the reel shaft and its drive shaft, breaking supporting bearings and then the chain--all in less than 2 sec. -this was a 2 day repair

Long story, but hope it conveys the concept--TPM says NEVER FAIL IN SERVICE UNTIL NEXT REBUILD and Can't shut down until then: RCM says REPAIR IT WHEN NEEDED TO ENSURE IT DOESN"T FAIL WHEN RUNNING. RCM presumes scheduled downtime or periodic maintenance outages are OK (like with installed spares)

Take aircraft--some things like wings, control surfaces cannot fail in service without serious consequences, so jetliners are taken apart (literally) every few years in a 'demate' inspection to ensure as-new condition and high degree of certainty no deterioration in capability before next scheduled inspection. Other parts are periodically renewed based on calendar time in service (hoses, elastomers, interiors) because experience shows the performance capability deteriorates that way and those components may have serious consequences. Still other parts are renewed based on operating cycles or operating time, and still others based 'on-condition' .

TPM, it not preventive, like say above it more that this; it's productive because meaning to have accountab producción departament too; study the best relatión among productión and maintenance, with the objetive to improve the productivity, to encrease the avaible Machine Hs., to eliminate lost and waste time.- The RCM even more important development level; in gral in world class company.- In the RCM it's the TPM.- Are diferente step of the long and hartd race to W.C..- I hope to help you, don't hesitae to contact me ccvallino@hotmail.com.- thank a lot.- Best regard Carlos.-

RCM is promoted as a maintenance improvement strategy whereas TPM recognizes that the maintenance function alone cannot improve reliability.In RCM, 'basic equipment conditions' are established; and 'equipment-competent' operators are developed. While in TPM these are not established.TPM program is to prevent or mitigate the consequences of failures, while RCM is not to prevent the failures themselves.