In a reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) analysis that has proposed to establish the (preventive) maintenance program in a systematic way, the following steps are normally covered:
• functionality analysis, which defines the main functions of the system/equipment;
• criticality analysis, which defines the failure modes of the equipment and their frequency (for which FMECA can be used);
• identification of the causes of failure and the mechanisms for critical fault modes;
• Definition of the type of maintenance based on the criticality of the failure, the failure probability, the maintenance cost, etc.