The biggest challenge in RRM is ensuring timely planning. The often unavoidable periods of plant downtime, delivery times for components and availability of installation resources need to be planned for the long term, sometimes over periods well in excess of one year.

The operator/maintenance team should therefore plan annual coordination with the stakeholders in good time. For planning purposes, there are also frequently difficulties in predicting End of Life (EOL) of critical system components. In this case, it makes particular sense to consider the possibilities of system condition monitoring coupled with predictive algorithms (see also Module 1) in order to weigh up the costs and benefits.

When budgeting, it should be noted that a 1:1 exchange of components is usually to be declared as OPEX and a CAPEX declaration is only possible if an exchange of components achieves significant improvements for the operation, e.g. an increase in throughput.

It is good practice to draw up a rough long-term plan together with equipment manufacturers and to update this annually according to the actual wear and tear.