The Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM) is a decision logic analysis process used to establish more efficient and cost-effective life-time maintenance and logistic support programs. It is based on tailoring, as far as possible, the actual preventive maintenance tasks on the frequency and consequences of failures. It can be performed starting with a RAM (Reliability, Availabiliy and Maintainability) analysis, preferably from the design stage, through the whole lifetime. The process allows to give specifications of RAM requirements to designers, and, once the system is operating, can be applied to optimize maintenance by selecting the most appropriate strategy, i.e.:

• spare part allocation
• condition monitoring
• dedicated test and inspection programs
• re-design.

To diffuse this approach in the shipping field, RINA  has developed the Additional Class Notation STAR-MACH