Once the critical failure modes have been identified, a maintenance strategy can be selected based on logical RCM decision tree [7, 6, 9] and probabilistic models for maintenance optimisation [5]. RCM optimises the various maintenance strategies based on the findings from the functional failure analysis. For gearboxes, planning and implementing a PM programme under the RCM approach can be complicated due to the variety of gearbox designs installed in turbines under different operating conditions. A key focus area when implementing RCM is that inspection manuals and procedures should
be designed and prepared by a technical team with both field and design experience. This on the one hand, will help the design engineers to ensure that the service technicians’ tasks are aligned to design guidelines so that after a series of ma
intenance tasks or inspections, the results will be easily correlated to the design information.