Once it has embedded the RCM approach to maintaining critical items of equipment at Evesham over the next 12 months, it will do the same in the Netherlands, the US and elsewhere, according to Richard Kelly, director of the consultancy Engineering Maintenance Systems (EMS). EMS has been training teams from Dawn Foods, including the Netherlands.

Parent company Dawn Food Products is going down this route because the firm's president, Briton Phil Batty, is a champion of RCM, adds Kelly. He defends RCM, which is sometimes viewed by critics as being too complex. More user-friendly total productive maintenance (TPM) techniques are often preferred, he says, although EMS's approach to RCM - called lean-focused maintenance - is targeted at operators in a way that is similar to TPM, making it easier to understand and implement correctly.

"RCM is a more thorough process than TPM," says Kelly. But he says it requires more resources and considerable analytical assessment than TPM to work properly. "But where applied correctly its produces better results. RCM tells you exactly what you should do and at which time."

However, he admits that some organisations have tried and abandoned RCM because of the failure to get commitment from senior management.

Evesham site engineering manager Tony Perkins says: "Previously the site's strategy was literally fire-fighting. Since we have implemented RCM, we have gone from a reactive to a proactive strategy. Currently 50% of the plant is covered and the process will be completed by the end of 2007. What makes the difference to this programme is that the European leadership team and the site manager is backing it 100%."

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