Critical Success Factors of the Reliability-Centred Maintenance Implementation in the Oil and Gas Industry

Reliability-Centred Maintenance (RCM) is a strategic process to improve the maintenance planning of companies which contributes to sustainable production. This method has been applied by numerous industries to achieve an efficient maintenance process, but many have not fully completed their goals. The reason for this failure is that RCM implementation is complex, and organisations need to have adequate preparations before they implement it. In the pre-implementation phase, it is necessary to know the number of Critical Success Factors (CSFs) as a critical measure for implementing the RCM method successfully. Therefore, it is important for practitioners to apply a symmetric mechanism involving fuzzy systems to achieve the desired RCM implementation. There are a limited number of studies that have observed these factors regarding the characteristics of oil and gas companies, especially in the pre-implementation phase. Addressing RCM pre-implementation issues is of high importance from the economic perspective of sustainability for oil and gas organisations. The objective of this study is to investigate significant items in RCM pre-implementation through a combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses. The Nominal Group Technique (NGT) method is applied by gaining the opinion of experts to determine the factors and prioritising them using mathematical modelling. A group of related experts from the oil and gas industry were initially interviewed and surveyed to determine the critical success factors. These identified factors were then analysed using quantitative analysis to identify the important degrees and scored using Fuzzy Analytic Network Process (FANP). Fifteen major factors affecting the criticality of successful RCM implementation have been identified and prioritised, based on their weights. The model proposed in this study could be used as a guideline for assessing CSFs in other countries. To apply the proposed model in different contexts, it needs to be modified according to the needs, policies, and perspectives of each country.