Last Updated on April 15, 2024 by maximosecrets

The Reliability Strategies application was new to MAS 8.11 released in late September 2023. It will be found in the Assets module, and it is a graphite application, one built with the new user interface used for role-based applications, rather than using the classic UI built with Application Designer.

Reliability Strategies is the first application in providing a Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) capability to Maximo.

What is RCM?

RCM is a study of how assets and asset systems fail and what activities might be performed to mitigate one or more of those potential failures. It starts by defining the Failure Modes and Failure Effects often referred to as Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA). Failure Modes is what can cause a functional failure. Failure Effects is the result of the failure assuming no maintenance is performed.

RCM extends the results of the FMEA by reviewing the consequences of failure including, safety, environment, operational and non-operational consequences. Then, when the consequence of failure is understood, what could be done to prevent failure or reduce the effect of the consequences of failure. This may include maintenance activities of all types including the monitoring of condition, but it could be operational activities with changes to procedures, training programmes, etc, or the stocking of components so that when failure occurs the asset can be repaired quickly reducing the effect of the failure.

After an RCM study is complete for an asset, or asset type and the results of the study implemented there should be a feedback loop to review the effectiveness of the decisions made during the RCM process. Over time failure modes might be added where they have been missed, PM frequencies may be adjusted, additional tasks performed during inspection, measurements taken, advanced condition monitoring techniques implemented. The RCM process doesn’t finish after the study is complete.

Reliabilities Strategy Overview

Reliability Strategies is a library of failure details for specific asset types. The data has been compiled by experts in their field. There are hundreds of assets and several thousand potential failures for different operating contexts. For each component the failure mechanism (problems) and failure influences (causes) are identified and associated with a set of mitigation activities that provides the details and frequencies for a Preventive Maintenance activity and the tasks for a Job Plan depending on the chosen operating context.

The IBM slide above gives a good indication of the volume of information provided by this library and this article, and its screenshots will give you an indication of the level of detail provided.

Reliability Strategies is an add-on to Maximo, and it must be separately licensed. You will need to configure an End Point and in the Object Structures application an API Route. Instructions can be found here – https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/mas-cd/maximo-manage/continuous-delivery?topic=strategies-configuring-reliability

The Reliability Strategies application is a view onto the library data held elsewhere, there is no data stored in the Maximo database that I could discover and there is no save button. The suggested PMs and Job Plans would need to be manually added to Maximo. There is nothing yet available which joins this library data to Maximo data and there is currently no ability to add the results of your own RCM studies into the library. However, if some of the asset types covered by this library are a match to the asset types that you have in your environment then the Reliabilities Strategy add-on would be a useful starting point if you were looking to start some RCM studies, or you wanted to extend the work you have already performed.

Selecting the Reliability Strategy

When you open the Reliability Strategies application you are presented with three fields Asset, Asset TypeThe Asset Type is used for grouping assets and is used in the Health application of the Maximo Application Suite. More and Asset Configuration, you start with the Asset field. I have started to type, and a drop down presents possible values containing the letters entered. I’m searching for a Pump, and it is found after the first two letters ‘pu’.

You might have noticed the absence of any traditional action menus or buttons to save a record, this is an application where you only view the data that you select, there is no data to save, but we’ll find later that you can copy some of the data.

There looks to be around 80 Asset records.

When you have selected the Asset – Pump in my case, you can select the Asset Type. A pump provides Asset Type choices for Centrifugal, Hydraulic, Positive Displacement, Pump, Submersible and Vacuum.

When I picked a Pump – Centrifugal – there were many Asset Configurations to choose from and eventually I chose Pump -Horizontal – Multistage – Barrel Type – Mechanical Seal – Radial-Sleeve Bearings-Oil Lubed. 

After you have selected the Asset Configuration the button Get Strategy becomes enabled, and changes colour from grey to blue.

If you use the X button to the right of these three fields, it clears the selection for this field and any other field to the right. Clearing the Asset field clears the Asset Type and Asset Configuration fields.

There are over 800 records which can be selected from these three fields.

Failure Modes

After receiving the reliability strategy three tabs appear the first being on Overview. It tells us there are 122 Failure Modes and 10 Mitigation Activities. To the right is text providing the boundary of the failure modes analysis performed.

The second tab, Failure Modes provides the components and their failure mechanisms in a hierarchical view. I’ve selected Impellers and the four Failure Mechanisms are Wear, Improper O.D, Loose, and Physical Damage. A Failure Mechanism describes how a failure occurs, similar to a problem code.

If you drill further down from a Failure Mechanism you have a set of Failure Influencers. For Impeller – Wear there were six to choose from and I will select Improper axial positioning. A Failure Influence is the reason for the failure, similar to a cause code.

After selecting a Failure Influence, information appears to the right including a set of Mitigation Activities with how effective this would be in mitigating against this functional failure, High, Medium, or Low.

Mitigation Activities

On the Mitigation Activities tab you can select the Operating Context using three radio buttons:

• Criticality with options for Critical or Minor
• Duty Cycle with options for High or Low
• Service Condition with options for Severe or Mild

The default assumes the top radio button for all three parameters, a critical asset with high duty cycle that is in a severe service condition. Depending on the settings there is a set of activities where the frequency changes according to the radio button settings.

There is help text explaining the meaning of the Operating Context’s three fields and their settings to guide you. This is the (i) information button next to the Operating Context title.

There is also a matrix of the recommended frequency per operating context. There are 8 combinations of the three radio buttons. The acronym at the top of each column is the first letter representing the setting of each radio button. To help I’ve provided the table below:

Operating Context	Criticality	Duty Cycle	Service Condition
CHS	Critical	High	Severe
CLS	Critical	Low	Severe
CHM	Critical	High	Mild
CLM	Critical	Low	Mild
MHS	Minor	High	Severe
MLS	Minor	Low	Severe
MHM	Minor	High	Mild
MLM	Minor	Low	Mild

The frequencies are:

• AR – As Required
• N/A – Not Applicable
• 3M, 6M, 1Y – 3 Months, 6 Months, 1 Year
• 1S, 1D – Once/Shift, Once/Day

When we change the criticality from Critical to Minor and leave the other two radio buttons the same, we would move from reading the CHS column to the MHS column. The effect of this is that it suggests moving the Oil Analysis from every 3M (three months) to 2Y (two years), Operator Rounds from 1S (once/shift) to 1D (once/day). Performance Trending would move from 2Y (two years) to NR (Not Required) and Vibration Analysis from 1M (one month) to 3M (three months).

If you highlight an Activity, then on the right you will have information about the recommend Preventive Maintenance (PM) and Job Plan. The Frequency for the PM and the amount of Labor Hours are also provided. To the right are buttons to copy both the PM and Job Plan information.

Further down is a table highlighting the effectiveness of the mitigation activity in addressing the Failure Mode.

You can see that as you change the activity, in my example from Oil Analysis to Oil Filter Change, Clean and Inspect, then the PM and Job Plan details will change on the right.

At the bottom are the Failure Modes and the effectiveness of the activity in addressing the failure mode. There is a hyperlink on the Failure Modes that will take you through to the information about the Failure Mode as the next screenshot illustrates.

You can navigate to the Failure Modes from the Mitigating Activity and vice versa.

Security Groups

After installation in a MAXDEMO database there is a new Security Group for RELIABILITYSTRATEGIES with access to the Reliability Strategies application, an application with an application type of Work Center. MAXADMIN and MAXUSER also have the same access rights.