A Success-Centric Evolution of Reliability-Centered Maintenance in Modern Asset Management
Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM) has served as the dominant industrial maintenance philosophy for nearly five decades, delivering substantial gains in safety, availability, and cost control. However, its core vocabulary, built around Failure Mode, Mean Time Between Failures, and the Potential-to-Functional Failure curve, frames organizational cognition around breakdown rather than performance excellence. This article proposes a complementary, success-oriented framework, the Potential Success Curve (PSC), and demonstrates its practical alignment with contemporary asset management practice. Methodologically, the study employs an integrative cross-disciplinary review with deductive construct development, comparative standards analysis, and worked operational examples. Grounded in Prospect Theory, Appreciative Inquiry, Safety-II, and the lineage of transformative management methodologies including Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), Lean, Total Quality Management, and Six Sigma, the framework introduces several novel constructs: the Golden Spot (an asset’s optimal performance envelope), Mean Time of Optimal Performance (MTOP), Mean Time to Restore Golden Spot (MTTRg), Success Rate , Overall Performance Excellence (OPE), Success Mode and Effects Analysis (SMEA), and Root Success Analysis (RSA). A new D-I-S-G model extends the traditional D-I-P-F curve. The framework is operationalized through a SMART (Specific, Measurable, Applicable, Realistic, Time-bound) validation structure and is mapped explicitly to ISO 55000: 2024, ISO 55001: 2024, API 580/581, SAE JA1011, ISO 14224, and IEC 60300. The article further demonstrates how emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, digital twins, and the Industrial Internet of Things, serve as practical enablers of the framework, and quantifies the potential impact on the industrial business landscape. While the proposed constructs require empirical validation, their theoretical foundations are individually well established, and the framework is positioned as a complementary layer that enhances rather than replaces established practice. The principal limitation of the study is the absence of primary empirical data; all proposed constructs are explicitly formulated as testable propositions, and the research agenda for field validation is set out in Section 12.2.