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JQME METHODOLOGY AND THEORY

16,4
Plant function deployment via
RCM and QFD
354
Azadeh Kianfar
Luleå University of Technology, Luleå, Sweden, and
Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, and
Ferydoon Kianfar
Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to address the capability of reliability-centered maintenance (RCM),
which is a preventive maintenance design tool.
Design/methodology/approach – A model named Plant Function Deployment (PFD) is developed,
in which the methodology of quality function deployment (QFD) is added to RCM to improve RCM
capability in preserving the functions of the plants.
Findings – The objective of preserving the plant functions with least resources, in RCM, is attained
more efficiently if the methodology of QFD is added to RCM.
Practical implications – PFD is a model for designing a preventive maintenance program which
uses RCM and QFD methodologies. PFD organizes all the important data and information, gathered by
RCM, in a matrix chart named The House of Quality. This chart gives a compact and detailed picture
of all the relationships between the failure modes and functions of the plant, with logical numerical
measures, for evaluating the degree of importance of the failure modes for receiving preventive
maintenance tasks. In PFD the maintenance engineers use the information contained in the House of
Quality to select preventive maintenance tasks and their frequencies. This causes the designed
preventive maintenance program to approach more closely the optimal program with the objective of
preserving the plant functions with least resources.
Originality/value – In comparison with RCM, PFD provides additional valuable information about
failure modes, in a compact form, which can be used by the maintenance design engineers when they
are trying to select the best preventive maintenance tasks for the plants.
Keywords Maintenance reliability, Quality function deployment, Preventive maintenance
Paper type Conceptual paper

1. Introduction
In this paper the concepts and techniques of quality function deployment (QFD), which
is a well-known tool of total quality management (TQM), are added to the methodology
of reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) to improve RCM effectiveness in designing
preventive maintenance program of the plants.

Journal of Quality in Maintenance
Engineering
Vol. 16 No. 4, 2010
pp. 354-366
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1355-2511
DOI 10.1108/13552511011084517
This paper is based on the thesis of Azadeh Kianfar for the MSc program in maintenance
management and engineering offered by Luleå University of Technology, Luleå, Sweden, in
collaboration with Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran.
Azadeh Kianfar is at present an instructor at Darugar Applied Science Center, Karaj, Tehran,
Iran.
 RCM was first introduced by the aircraft industry of the USA in 1978, Nowlan and Plant function
Heap (1978). At the present time several books about RCM are available, for example deployment
Moubray (1997) and Smith and Hinchcliffe (2004). In addition, the Society of
Automotive Engineers has a publication for a definitive set of RCM criteria, SAE
JA1011 (SAE, 1999). RCM is a systematic and disciplined approach for designing the
preventive maintenance for the plants. The objective in RCM is to preserve the
functions of the plant with least resources used, or it tries to optimize the preventive 355
maintenance activities with constraint of preserving the function of the plant.
QFD is also a systematic and disciplined procedure for designing products and
services of organizations. Dr Mizuno of the Tokyo Institute of Technology is credited
with initiating the quality function deployment and its first application was at
Mitsubishi Heavy Industry Ltd Japan, in 1972. At the present time there are several
books available about QFD, for example, Besterfield et al. (2003) and Bossert (1991).
The objective in QFD is to satisfy the requirements of the customers of the product or
service under design with best uses of the organization’s resources, or to maximize
customers’ satisfaction with limited resources.
Comparison of the objective of the quality function deployment with the objective of
reliability centered maintenance shows that we can combine these two techniques to
gain the benefits of both in designing the preventive maintenance programs of the
plants. This is the purpose of this research. More specifically: The aim of this research
is to present a systematic and disciplined procedure which includes both RCM
methodology and QFD methodology for designing the preventive maintenance
program of the plants. The resulting procedure is called Plant Function Deployment
(PDF).
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: In section 2 a brief description
of RCM is presented which covers its principles and steps. In section 3, which is the
main section of this report, PFD is described in details. Finally section 4 covers
discussions and conclusions.

2. A brief description of RCM

In this section we present a brief description of the RCM methodology with the
emphasis on the importance of failure modes prioritizing method for RCM. The
methodology presented in Smith and Hinchcliffe (2004) is used for this section.
RCM preventive maintenance is a performance of inspections and servicing tasks
that have been preplanned for accomplishment at specific points in time to retain the
functional capabilities of operating equipments, systems, and plant with least
resources.
There are four basic task categories in any preventive maintenance program,
including RCM, as follows:
(1) Prevent or mitigate failure occurrence (time-directed (TD)). When we use TD
tasks, at specified hard time intervals overhauls are done regardless of any
other consideration.
(2) Detect onset of failure (condition-directed (CD)). Measuring some parameter
over time where it has been established that the parameter correlates with
incipient failure conditions is CD task. The task action is not intrusive with
respect to the equipment.
JQME (3) Discover a hidden failure (failure-finding (FF)). A prescheduled option to check
16,4 if all is in proper working order is a failure finding (FF) task.
(4) Do nothing, because of valid limitation (run to failure (RTF)). RTF is a deliberate
decision to allow an equipment to operate until it fails- and no preventive
maintenance of any kind is ever performed.
356 A preventive maintenance program is specifying the use of one or more of these four
tasks over time for each equipment(subsystem or system of the plant under
consideration. In subsections 2.1 a brief description of RCM methodology for
specifying these tasks is presented.

2.1 Steps in RCM methodology

The RCM methodology follows the following steps in designing the preventive
maintenance program:
(1) System selection and information collection. In this step the level of assembly
which is used in the analysis is identified, which is usually at system level. Also
necessary system information that will be needed in the subsequent steps is
collected at this step.
(2) System boundary definition. In this step major equipment included in the system
are identified with primary physical boundaries.
(3) System descriptions and functional block diagram. In this step five items of
information are developed:
.
System description. At this point in the analysis process, a great deal of
information is collected regarding what constitutes the system and how it
operates.
.
Functional block diagram. The functional block diagram is a top level
representation of the major functions that the system performs and the
blocks are labeled as the functional subsystems for the system.
.
IN/OUT interfaces. A variety of elements (electrical power, signals, heat,
fluids, gases, etc.) comes in across the system boundary and some move out
to support other systems in the plant. These are called IN and OUT
interfaces that is documented in this step.
.
System work breakdown structure (SWBS). SWBS is used to describe the
compilation of the equipment (component) list for each of the functional
subsystem shown on the functional block diagram.
.
Equipment history. For RCM purposes, the equipment history is associated
with failures that have been experienced over the past two or three years.
This failure history is usually derived from work orders that were written to
perform corrective maintenance tasks.
(4) System functions and functional failures. In this step functions and functional
failures statements are defined for each functional system by capturing every
output interface. In defining functional failure statements focus is on loss of
functions. Functional failures are more than just a single, simple statement of
function loss. Most functions will have two or more loss condition.
 (5) Failure modes and effect analysis. In this step for each functional failure the Plant function
specific component failure modes and the root cause for each failure mode are deployment
defined. Also the consequence of each failure mode is defined at three levels of
consideration, at component level, at system level and at plant level.
(6) Ranking of failure modes. The purpose of this step is to rank the failure modes
in order to priorities them for allocating the maintenance resources of the
organization to them. Since this step relates heavily to the subject of this 357
research it will be explained in more details in subsection 2.2.
(7) Task selection:
.
The task selection process. In this step for each failure mode, the lists of
applicable candidate tasks (the tasks that prevent or mitigate failure, detect
onset of failure, or discover a hidden failure) are determined and then the
most cost-effective option among the competing candidates is selected. If no
applicable task exists, then the only option is RTF. If the cost of an
applicable PM task exceeds the cumulative costs associated with failure,
then the effective task option will also be RTF.
.
Sanity check. In this step and for those failure modes with RTF as their
selected PM task we check whether to keep RTF task or there are reasons to
change the RTF task to the other PM task(s).
.
Task comparison. If RCM application is to an existing plant or facility, then
there is a PM program of one sort or another already in place. It is fairly
certain that management will want to know how the RCM based PM tasks
stack up against the current PM tasks. How different is the RCM program
and what is the nature of those differences? This step presents such
comparison information.
(8) Implementation (carrying RCM to the floor). In this step we implement RCM by
task packaging. Task packaging is the specific process for integrating the ideal
PM task selections into the existing corporate infrastructure for the purpose of
putting the applicable and cost-effective PM tasks into the daily operating
routine.

2.2 The current method for ranking the failure modes

The current method of ranking the failure modes in RCM methodology is to define few
categories, based on importance of failure modes, first. Then the RCM team of
engineers considers each failure mode characteristics and its consequences,
subjectively, and put it in one of the categories. Each category has general
definitions for the characteristics and consequences of its failure modes. This definition
shows the rank of the failure modes in this category in relation to the failure modes in
other categories. The designers of the RCM maintenance program use this ranking to
allocate the limited maintenance resources to failure modes.
The above method for ranking the failure modes in RCM is explained in two
well-known books about RCM by Smith and Hinchcliffe (2004) and Moubray (1997), as
explained below.
Smith and Hinchcliffe (2004) define Logic Tree Analysis (LTA) for ranking of failure
modes. Here six categories of failure modes are defined, which are labeled D/A, A, D/B,
B, D/C, C. The definition of each category is as follows:
JQME (1) D/A. Hidden failure with safety problem.
16,4 (2) A. Evident failure with safety problem.
(3) D/B. Hidden failure with outage problem.
(4) B. Evident failure with outage problem.
(5) D/C. Hidden failure with minor economic problem.
358
(6) C. Evident failure with minor economic problem.

The rank, or importance, of categories decreases from D/A to C. In LTA each failure
mode is put in one of these categories to prioritize the emphasis and resources that
should be devoted to it, relative to its category rank. Moubray (1997) defines five
categories for ranking of failure modes, as explained below:
(1) Hidden. A function whose failure will not become evident to the operating crew
under normal circumstances if it occurs on its own.
(2) Safety. It could injure or kill a human being.
(3) Environmental. It could breach any corporate, municipal, regional, national or
international standard or regulation that applies to the physical asset or system
under consideration.
(4) Operational. It could adversely affect the operational capability of a physical
asset or system.
(5) Non-operational. It is not hidden and does not have safety, environmental or
operational consequences, but only requires repair.

The objective of the ranking of the failure modes is to rank the failure modes in
descending order of importance for receiving maintenance attentions by RCM program
designers. Considering this objective, the current method of ranking the failure modes
has the following shortcomings:
.
The safety problem, outage problem, and evidence of failure modes are relative
terms. But in current ranking method it is assumed that with respect to each
problem each failure mode either has this problem or not.
.
The assigning of failure modes to categories is based on overall judgments of the
maintenance engineers and its analytical content is poor.
.
The information content, showing why a failure mode is in certain level of
importance for receiving maintenance resources, is poor.
.
The effects that a failure mode can have on various functions of the subsystems,
systems and plant are not explicitly analyzed.

Considering these shortcomings, in section 3 a prioritizing procedure is presented

which reduces these shortcomings considerably and has other advantages too. The
core of this procedure is the application of “the House of Quality” of the QFD technique
for RCM.
3. PFD via RCM and QFD Plant function
In this section we present a technique, which we name Plant Function Deployment deployment
(PFD). The name and concept for PFD are borrowed from QFD, which is a well-known
tool of TQM, and hence we explain briefly the QFD first.
There are many books and articles about QFD, for example, Besterfield et al. (2003)
and Bossert (1991). Here we use Besterfield et al. (2003) to explain QFD. QFD is a
planning tool used to fulfill customer expectation. It is a disciplined approach to 359
product and process design. QFD focuses on customer expectations, often referred to as
the voice of the customer. It is employed to translate customer expectations, in terms of
specific requirements, into directions and actions, in terms of engineering or technical
characteristics. The primary tool used in QFD is the House of Quality. The House of
Quality translates the voice of the customer into design requirements. The structure of
QFD can be thought of as a framework of a house, as shown in Figure 1. The parts of
the House of Quality are described as follows:
.
The left and right exterior walls of the house relates to the customer
requirements. On the left side is a listing of the voice of the customer, or what the
customer expects in the product. On the right side are the prioritized customer
requirements, or the relative importance of the items of requirements listed on
the left side.
.
The ceiling of the house contains the technical descriptors, consisting of the
product engineering characteristics, design constrains, and parameters.
.
The interior of the house is the relationships between customer requirements and
technical descriptors.

Figure 1.
House of Quality
JQME .
The roof is the interrelationships between technical descriptors. Trade-off
16,4 between similar and/or conflicting technical descriptors is identified here.
.
The foundation of the House of Quality is the prioritized technical descriptors, or
the relative importance of the items of technical descriptors. Items such as the
technical benchmarking, degree of technical difficulty are listed here too.

360 Once the House of Quality is filled up by the team of product designers they have a
very good pictorial representation of the design project. It shows customer requirement
with priorities, technical elements affecting the customer requirement, relationships
between technical elements and customer requirements, and the relative importance of
technical elements. This compact valuable information can be used effectively in the
process of product or process design. In subsection 3.1 we use the concepts of the
House of Quality to present the PFD.

3.1 Description of PFD

The objective of RCM is to preserve the plant function with limited maintenance
resources. In QFD the objective is to satisfy the requirements of the customers of a
product or service with limited resources. Now if we consider the preventive maintenance
that RCM specifies for a plant as a service and define the customer requirements for this
service to be preserving the function of the plant, its systems, and subsystems, we can use
QFD for maintenance via RCM. By so doing all the proven advantages of QFD for design
processes are added to RCM preventive maintenance design process.
In subsection 3.1.1, the steps for implementing PFD, using the RCM methodology, is
presented.
3.1.1 Steps of PFD. For PFD, similar to QFD, the primary tool used is the House of
Quality matrix. To describe the steps of the plant function deployment we consider the
designing of a RCM project for a plant for which the RCM engineers team has
completed steps 1-5 of RCM, as described in section 2, namely:
(1) System selection and information collection.
(2) System boundary definition.
(3) System description and functional block diagram.
(4) System functions and functional failures.
(5) Failure mode and effect analysis.

At this point of RCM project, the RCM engineers’ team knows the plant, its systems,
and the subsystems of each system. Also the functions of the plant, systems and
subsystems are defined by the team. The team has the list of the components of each
system and subsystem and has defined all the failure modes of each component and the
characteristics of each failure mode. Now using the basic House of Quality for PFD,
which is shown in Figure 2, the steps of PFD are described as follows:
(1) List functional failures. RCM team of engineers list the selected systems and if
for any system subsystems are defined, they are listed too. Then for each
system or subsystem all specified functional failures are listed. The location of
these lists is at the left side of the House of Quality, as shown in Figure 2. Of
course in defining systems, subsystems and functional failures all the points
specified in RCM methodology should be considered.
 Plant function
deployment

361

Figure 2.
Basic House of Quality for
PFD

(2) List failure modes. The ceiling of the House of Quality in Figure 2 is where the
plant systems, which are analyzed by RCM team, are listed. For each of these
systems if it has subsystems, they are listed too. For each system and
subsystem its components and the failure modes related to each component are
listed. Again following the RCM methodology for defining these failure modes
is essential for this step.
(3) Develop a relationship matrix between functional failures and failure modes.
A failure mode can have no effect on a function of system or subsystem, or it
can affect it. When it affects the function its effect can be at various levels. For
example the failure mode of “relay failed open” in a power supply line of a
JQME system shutdowns the function of the system but the failure mode of “loose
16,4 connection of the cable” in the power supply line of this system can reduce the
output (function) of this system. Furthermore a failure mode can affect more
than one function in a system or subsystem or in different systems of a plant.
To show the functions that are affected by each failure mode and also their
relative relationship degrees the relationship matrix is developed by RCM team
362 of engineers, as explained below:
.
A scale is selected by the team to show the degree of relationship. If the scale
which is usually used in QFD is selected it has four levels, namely, strong
relationship, medium relationship, weak relationship, and no relationship.
We use this scale for this step of PFD.
.
It helps to have a better representation of relationships if symbols are used to
represent the degree of relationship between functional failures and failure
modes (this is common in QFD). For example, an asterisk ( *) represents a
strong relationship, a circle (W) represents a medium relationship, an £ ( £ )
represents a weak relationship, and blank to represent no relationship.
.
The symbols that are used to define the relationship are replaced with
numbers in latter steps. It is up to the RCM team to decide on these numbers.
The common practice in QFD is: * ¼ 9, W ¼ 3, £ ¼ 1, and blank ¼ 0.
.
After selecting the scale, the RCM team considers each failure mode listed in
the ceiling of the House of Quality, and uses its knowledge and experience to
define the degree of relationship of the failure mode with each functional
failure listed in the left wall of the House of Quality. One of the symbols is
put in each intersection box, shown in Figure 2, of the failure mode under
analysis and each functional failure.
.
After completing the relationship matrix, it is evaluated for empty rows or
columns. An empty row indicates that some failure modes are missing and
should be added to the list of failure modes. An empty column indicates that
the relating failure mode dose not affect any of the functional failure and,
after careful scrutiny, may be removed from the House of Quality.
(4) Develop an interrelationship matrix between failure modes. The roof of the
House of Quality in Figure 2, called correlation matrix, is used to identify any
interrelationship between each pair of failure modes. Some failure modes can
have positive or negative effect on occurrence of other failure modes. For
example, the failure mode “ flow regulator of fuel gas jammed” can cause the
failure mode “ burner tripped” to occur, which is a positive relationship or
the failure mode “ level switch failed low” can reduce the chance of occurrence of
the failure mode “ buffer tank empty” which is a negative relationship. Here
again, as in QFD, symbols are used to show the strength and kind of
interrelationship in PDF. For example, a rectangle (h) represents a strong
positive interrelationship, a circle (W) represents a positive interrelationship, an
£ ( £ ) represents a negative interrelationship, an asterisk ( *) represents a
strong negative relationship, and blank to represent no relationship.
(5) Develop prioritized functional failure importance. Almost always the importance
of different functional failures in a plant is not the same for the function of the
 plant. For example, the functional failure of the main power supply of the plant Plant function
is much more important than, say, the functional failure of a compressor as a deployment
subsystem when there are several of them in parallel. Thus in PFD where the
objective is to preserve the plant function with least resources used it is
essential to prioritize functional failures first and then, in later steps of PFD, use
this information to prioritize failure modes for receiving attention of the RCM
team of engineers. For this purpose the team selects a rating scale for rating the 363
importance of each functional failure. This scale in the common practice of QFD
is 1 to 10, 1 for the least important and 10 for the most important; we suggest the
use of this scale for PFD too. Then the RCM team develops prioritized
functional failure importance as follows: Based on the knowledge and
experiences of the team each functional failure is rated. Let ri be the importance
rate of the functional failure i. these rates are written in the column labeled
“Functional failure importance” on the right side of the House of Quality shown
in Figure 2. The team can use tools such as Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP),
see Saaty (1980), for rating the functional failures.
(6) Develop prioritized failure modes. The prioritized failure modes make up a block
of rows corresponding to each failure mode in the foundation of the House of
Quality, as shown in Figure 2. These rows are degree of evidence, degree of
safety problem, degree of technical difficulty, absolute weight and weight in
percent. Using these rows the RCM team of engineers identifies failure modes
importance rank for receiving attention of the team when they select preventive
maintenance tasks, steps 7 and 8 of RCM, which were described in section 2, for
failure modes. These ranking measures replace subjective opinions of the team
members with specific information that guide the subsequent efforts of the team
in designing the RCM program.
The procedure for developing prioritized failure modes is as follows:
.
Degree of evidence. The answer to the question “Is the failure mode hidden?”
is not always yes or no. For example consider the failure mode “the hydraulic
fluid in a car steering system is low“. This failure mode is neither hidden, nor
evident. It has a probability of being detected in a specified working
condition. Finding this probability is difficult but it is possible to assign a
degree of evidence to it based on knowledge and experiences of experts. In
PFD, the RCM team uses its knowledge and experiences and assigns a
degree of evidence to each failure mode, based on a scale that the team
selects. This scale can be the numbers 1 to 10, 1 for completely evident and
10 for completely hidden. The first line in the foundation of the House of
Quality in Figure 2 is for the degree of evidence of the failure modes.
. Degree of safety problem. Safety problems, related to the consequences of
occurrence of a failure mode, are a relative term. Safety, in the context used
here, refers to personal death or injury, either on-site or off site (however, the
RCM team can define safety in whatever fashion its particular needs may
dictate). In PFD the RCM team defines safety problems and selects a scale for
degree of safety problem of the failure modes. Then the RCM team uses its
knowledge and experiences to assign a degree to each failure mode. This
scale can be the numbers 1 to 10, 1 for no safety problem and 10 for the most
JQME serious safety problems. The second line in the foundation of the House of
16,4 Quality in Figure 2 is for the degree of safety problems of the failure modes.
.
Degree of technical difficulty. The failure mode with less degree of technical
difficulty for its preventive maintenance tasks has higher priority of
receiving maintenance tasks, with respect to this factor of prioritizing. The
team of RCM engineers selects a scale for degree of technical difficulty of the
364 failure modes. This scale can again be the numbers 1 to 10, 1 for the most
difficult and 10 for the least difficult technical difficulty. Then the RCM team
uses its knowledge and experiences to assign a degree of technical difficulty
to each failure mode. The third line in the foundation of the House of Quality
in Figure 2 is for the degree of technical difficulty of the failure modes.
.
Absolute weight. In order to rank the failure modes with respect to their
importance to preserve the function of the plant an absolute weight is
assigned to each failure mode. Preserving the function of the plant is the
main objective in designing the preventive maintenance program by RCM
and hence the absolute weight of failure mode is one of the most important
factors, which affects its priority for receiving the maintenance tasks.
There is a popular and easy method for determining absolute weights in
QFD, see for example Besterfield et al. (2003). We use the same method for
PFD. In this method a numerical value is assigned to each symbol in the
relationship matrix, as explained in step 3 of PFD, and shown in Figure 2.
The absolute weight for the jth failure mode is then given by:

X
m
aj ¼ Rij r i
i¼1

where:

aj ¼ absolute weight for failure mode j, j ¼ 1, . . . , n.

Rij ¼ the degree of relationship between functional failure i and failure mode
j taken from the relationship matrix of the House of Quality. Rij? {0, 1,
3, 9} if the scale suggested in step 3 is used by RCM team.
ri ¼ the importance of the functional failure i, taken from the column labeled
“Functional failure importance” in the House of Quality in Figure 2.
m ¼ number of the functional failures.
n ¼ number of failure modes.
.
Weight in percent. We can convert the absolute weights to weights in percent
using the equation:
!
Xn
W j ¼ aj = ak 100
k¼1

where Wj ¼ weight in percent for the failure mode j. We can use 1,000 or
10,000 instead of 100 in the above equation, if Wjs are very small because of
large number of failure modes, n.
 (7) Use of House of Quality in task selection. In this step the benefits of PFD applied Plant function
to RCM analysis in preserving the function of the plant is realized. This step of deployment
PFD is in fact step 7 of RCM methodology, described in section 2. But with PFD
application, the RCM team has all the information contained in the House of
Quality which guides the team to use the maintenance resources on failure
modes relative to their effect on plant function and safety. This causes the
resources to be used where they pay off and hence the resulting preventive 365
maintenance program is closer to the optimal program.

3.2 Second House of Quality for analyzing PM tasks

The RCM team of engineers may find it beneficial to use second House of Quality in
analyzing and selecting the preventive maintenance tasks for prioritized failure modes.
This is especially true for failure modes with complicated root causes with different
candidates of preventive maintenance tasks and/or interrelated failure modes. In
addition, when PM tasks affect more than one failure modes, for example adding a
chemical protective agent to a circulating fluid in regular intervals that can prevent
many failure modes in the fluid path.
In preventive maintenance (PM) tasks selection the question is “What tasks and with
what frequencies?”. Selecting a specific task with its frequency requires some
maintenance resources of the organization. The benefit of this task is realized from its
effect on preserving the function of the plant through the task effects on failure modes.
Now the question is “Is the value more than the cost of the resources it requires?” If yes
the task should be selected, if not, the task and/or its frequency should change. To
analyze the benefits of each PM task the second House of Quality is a tool that can
provide compact and valuable information for the RCM team.
The second House of Quality can be used to evaluate the effects of each PM task on
plant function and safety, through failure modes. The process of preparing the second
House of Quality is accomplished by creating a new chart in which the selected failure
modes are listed on the left wall of the house and the prioritized failure mode information,
taken from the first House of Quality, on the right side of the second House of Quality.
The ceiling of the house is the candidate PM tasks that the RCM team has defined. The
foundation of the house shows prioritized PM tasks. Each box of relationship matrix
shows the relationship between the respected failure mode and PM task of the box.
Since the process of preparing the second House of Quality is very similar to that of
the first House of Quality the details are omitted.

4. Discussions and conclusions

RCM is a methodology for designing the preventive maintenance program of the plants,
with the objective of preserving the plan functions with least resources. In this research,
a method was presented to improve the capability of RCM by adding the capabilities of
QFD methodology to RCM. The resulting procedure was named PFD, via RCM.
PFD is a systematic and disciplined approach for designing preventive maintenance
program of the plants. In PFD the RCM steps are used up, to the point where all the
failure modes are defined by the RCM team of engineers. At this point, contrary to
RCM which uses the overall subjective opinion of the team to define the effects and
importance of the failure modes on the functions of the plant, PFD organizes all the
important data and information, gathered up to this point, in a matrix chart named The
JQME House of Quality. This chart gives a compact and detailed picture of all the
relationships between the failure modes and functions of the plant, with logical
16,4 numerical measures, for evaluating the degree of importance of failure modes for
receiving team attentions and preventive maintenance tasks. In PFD the team of RCM
uses the information contained in the House of Quality to select the tasks and their
frequencies for the PM program of the plant. This causes the team of RCM to make
366 more correct task selection decision and allocate the organization’s resources where it
has more return on investment, and hence the resulting preventive maintenance
program is expected to be much closer to the optimal program.
The use of second House of Quality, which shows the effects and importance of PM
task on plant functions through failure modes, is recommended in PFD, if the RCM
team finds it beneficial, as explained in subsection 3.2.
The disadvantage of PFD is that it requires extra work for preparing the House of
Quality. However, it should be noted that almost all the data needed for the House of
Quality are needed for RCM, explicitly or implicitly. The extra work is mainly for
organizing the data in the form of House of Quality, and some simple calculations. If
computer software is prepared and used this extra work over RCM is not much. There
are also some side benefits in using PFD. They are:
.
An orderly way of obtaining information and presenting it.
.
Fewer changes in PM program in the future.
.
Everything is preserved in writing.
.
Reduced chance of oversights during the design process.
. An environment of teamwork.
The opportunities to extend this work are: Preparing computer software for PFD.
Evaluating the effectiveness of PFD in actual preventive maintenance projects. Using
PFD framework to construct mathematical programming models for preventive
maintenance projects.

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