Reliability-Centered Maintenance Implementation in Food Packaging Production Lines: A Systematic Literature Review

Reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) is a structured approach to the identification of failure modes and prioritization of maintenance actions based on criticality of a particular equipment component and failure mode, therefore being suitable for meeting strict requirements for food safety and protection from contaminations in the context of food packaging production lines. Despite the efficiency of the proposed RCM-based reduction in reactive maintenance actions and associated expenses, the food industry still faces machine malfunctions, micro-stoppages, and primarily reactive maintenance approaches. This systematic review intends to aggregate, critically evaluate, and synthesize 51 peer-reviewed articles (2021-2026) devoted to the application of RCM in food packaging production with respect to effectiveness, facilitating and hindering factors, and contributions to resilience, compliance, and competitiveness. The research will use the systematic review protocol, which implies such steps as the definition of a systematic search strategy including systematic literature search in Google Scholar with four Boolean queries (800 articles initially found; 689 after duplicates elimination; 51 articles are selected for further analysis), MMAT quality appraisal, and content mapping of the selected articles in the scope of reliability engineering and food quality management. Based on the synthesis of results, the concept of an integrative framework is proposed, which links RCM, FMECA, IIoT, and HACCP to be validated empirically in the future. The framework will implement criticality classification based on RCM to determine HACCP control points in combination with IIoT-based condition monitoring, while FMECA risk indices will determine the maintenance prioritization and food-safety actions.