Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM) based maintenance plans are used in a number of safety critical industries such as aviation. We know that the system works well, so how can we cherry pick the benefits to apply to the industrial manufacturing environment without the onerous requirements? A small number of us at Fonterra thought so and set about to deploy a large scale RCM based maintenance program across 360,000 plant assets on 24 sites.
This presentation will showcase that journey including how we approached the key challenges typically faced of deeply understanding the concept, resourcing the upfront work and overcoming the ‘resistance’ at shop floor level. An education for all involved, this project produced some interesting outcomes we never predicted.

Coming from a farm in rural New Zealand, Rob is currently the National Reliability Engineering Manager at the nation’s largest company. After starting a career as an Avionics technician in the Air Force, his two decades in aviation saw him work in a variety of engineering roles including operations, project management and avionics instructor, as well as regulatory and certification work. Rob then joined the dairy industry as Maintenance Manager at a manufacturing site, before taking his current role leading plant reliability and stability across 24 dairy processing sites nationwide. In his spare time, Rob enjoys motorbike riding and is currently writing a book explaining exactly how to optimise asset management in a practical way.