Amoco is using reliability centered maintenance to improve gas processing plant rotating equipment operations

Reliability centered maintenance (RCM) is a process that can be used to define the maintenance requirements for any piece of plant equipment while considering the operating practices and conditions. This process has mainly been used on the rotating equipment in Amoco's gas processing plants. The reliability centered maintenance process has been used to assure that proper preventive and predictive maintenance procedures are used to minimize more expensive corrective maintenance. In the reliability reviews, teams of operators, mechanics, engineers, and original equipment manufacturer's personnel determine what the plant operators and maintenance personnel need to do to maximize the rotating equipment availability, minimize the maintenance costs, and maintain the mechanical integrity of the equipment. These reviews have also allowed the plants to minimize the spare parts kept for pumps and compressors through structured review of subassemblies at the appropriate detail level. The RCM process and applications to rotating equipment are discussed in this paper.