Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM) is the application of a structured method to fully understand a complex system, and to optimise maintenance arrangements by identifying the maintenance tasks necessary to effectively manage equipment failures. The process analyses the risks of all safety, environmental, and operational consequences of failure, and derives maintenance arrangements to reduce these risks to acceptable levels.

The RCM approach arose in the late 1960s and early 1970s when the increasing complexity of systems, and unacceptable levels of failure in service often with fatal consequences, forced a rethink of maintenance policies among manufacturers and operators of large passenger aircraft. Pioneering work on the subject was done by United Airlines in the 1970s to support the development and licensing of the Boeing 747. Reliability Centred Maintenance is a now a tried and tested methodology in wide use across many industries, and on more than 700 sites worldwide. Latest estimates are that well over 30,000 people have been trained in the process. Varous industry specific standards have been established to define the RCM process, the most widely recognised being the SAE standard JA1011.