Establishing When to Perform a Root Cause Failure Analysis (RCFA)

Many organizations develop and train personnel in the performance of Root Cause Failure Analysis (RCFA). This generally represents a significant investment in time and training costs. However, they sometimes find themselves frustrated by the lack of results from this investment. One of the key factors contributing to this lack of results is the failure to properly establish guidelines for when to execute an RCFA, and this results in the over use or under use of this tool.

The following factors should be considered to establish organizational guidelines for the execution of an RCFA:

• A balance must be achieved between the resources available and the number of events performed. Typically, a person should only lead or participate in three to four a year.


• The performance of an RCFA represents a significant investment in the use of company resources. A cost threshold, based on the failure’s impact to the business, should be established. Typically, this may be in the $10K to $20K range. Also, RCFAs are typically used to investigate and resolve all recordable or reportable safety and environmental incidents.

Once established, the organizational guidelines for the execution of an RCFA should be communicated throughout the organization.

What Information Should I Capture When Completing a Work Order?

Determining what information to capture when completing a work order is a question that all maintenance organizations struggle with. This question can be especially daunting to organizations transitioning from a paper based work order management system to a CMMS. In order to effectively answer this question one must start with the end in mind. In other words, what information will be useful to track over time? Below are some key pieces of data that should be captured when completing a work order and the value of tracking that data.

Completion Date & Time: This information allows the user to track when specific work was done. It allows for the development of historical trending which can be used setup preventive or predictive maintenance plans and calculate meantime between repairs or failures. This information should be captured for all resources working on the work order.

Labor Resources: This should include all resources that worked on the work order. This will make it possible to determine the true labor cost of the work order and the impact on resource for future planning.

Completion Comments: Completion comments should state in sufficient detail the work that was performed to complete the work order. Just putting “Complete” should be considered insufficient. The completion comments may capture discrepancies in the work suggested by the work order versus the work actually performed. It may indicate follow up work that needs to be done requiring the creation of additional work orders.

Materials Used: This information determines the true materials cost of the work order. It allows improved materials planning future work. It also provides the ability to trend material usage for specific assets over time.

Special Tools: Special tools such as man lifts, power tools, and specialty tools should be captured when completing the work order. This will allow for improved work scheduling by ensuring that work is scheduled when the necessary tools are available. By assigning cost related to the use of these tools, a better understanding of their impact on the overall work order costs can be determined.

Capturing the information above when completing a work order will allow the maintenance organization to get a better understanding of costs associated with specific work orders and specific assets. It can help an organization determine the appropriate staffing levels and skills needed to maintain the equipment and insight into what predictive and preventive maintenance programs should be put in place to improve equipment reliability. Capturing, trending, and reviewing these data elements will help a maintenance organization move from a reactive culture to a proactive culture.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Maintenance Organizations - HABIT 7

Habit 7 – Sharpen the Saw

Habit 7 is the law of continuous improvement. It’s about personal development and the development of personnel. We read articles like this one and attend seminars and conferences because we want to develop our skills, and that’s very admirable. Part of our employee strategy mentioned in Habit 2 may revolve around training or Sharpening the Saw. Effective organizations recognize that employees can’t be held responsible to do something in a certain way if they haven't been properly trained. They commonly use workflows as the preferred method of mapping out organizational activities that can then be easily followed and adhered to. They also recognize that precision maintenance skills and predictive maintenance skills are not always skills craftspeople bring to the company with them.

When companies proactively train personnel, they must first establish the end goal. For example, an end goal might be for employees to perform the tasks as outlined in the job plans. Some necessary first steps would be to find out what skills are needed to do that and what skills exist. Doing so allows for targeted training, which is less expensive than blanket training and more palatable to the student—another win/win. Learning additional skills often leads to job enhancement, which usually leads to job enrichment for the employee.

Conclusion

This is an extremely high overview of the 7 Habits and how they apply to successful maintenance organizations. Dr. Covey is listed as one of Time Magazine’s 25 Most Influential People for good reason. Practicing the 7 Habits has increased the productivity and quality of life of countless people. Read and re-read these 7 Habits looking for more ways in which they can apply in your life and in your organization. Research the topic more by reading or listening to the original works by Dr. Steven Covey or by contacting MRG.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Maintenance Organizations - HABIT 6

Habit 6 – Synergy

Covey says this is the habit of creative cooperation. The principle is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, which implicitly lays down the challenge to see the benefits and potential in another person's contribution.

In our example earlier, operations didn’t want to have the machine down at all, and maintenance felt they needed it for a full eight hours to repair the equipment properly. What if they compromised and agreed to repair the equipment in four hours? In that case, neither party would get what they wanted. In reality, that’s a lose-lose situation, the worst of the four possible outcomes in Habit 4.

Compromise should be a red flag that things aren’t right.

Instead, to find the win-win, one must proactively seek first to understand what it is that operations really needs. As a result they may say that it’s just not a good time for the equipment to be down. It’s possible that it wasn’t a good time for maintenance either. Maybe maintenance needed eight hours because the welder was out or a necessary part wasn’t in-house, so a part would have to be fabricated. During the conversation, it may be discovered that a combination of a temporary repair and a reduced load would allow operations to get their production out and allow maintenance to order the part and align all the necessary resources to fix the job right.

Now, instead of a lose-lose there is a win-win. Seeking to understand the other group’s needs is key toward establishing trust between departments. Some common activities during which synergy takes place in highly successful organizations are: Reliability Centered Maintenance Analysis (RCMA) sessions, Root Cause Failure Analysis (RCFA), Criticality Ranking sessions, and through Planner’s reviews of feedback forms completed by craftsmen at the close of Planned Maintenance activities.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Maintenance Organizations - HABIT 5

Habit 5 – Seek 1st to Understand, Then to be Understood

One of the great maxims of the modern age, this is Covey's habit of communication, and it's extremely powerful. Covey helps to explain this in his simple analogy “diagnose before you prescribe”, which is simple, effective, and essential for developing and maintaining positive relationships in all aspects.

Habit 5 is about communication and listening to the customer—in this case operations, employees, and management.

What do they mean when they say no? In presentations, I’ve often used the story of a supervisor who refused to let a maintenance department have a piece of equipment for as long as they asked.

What did the supervisor really mean when he said they couldn’t have the equipment for eight hours? Did he mean that if maintenance had the equipment for eight hours he wouldn’t make his production for the month? Did he mean he didn’t believe the equipment wouldn’t be down longer? Maybe he felt that if it was down eight hours he’d have to go over his overtime targets for the month. But, did he mean he’d rather have the job done partially or incorrectly? It’s possible that any or all of the first three may be true, but it’s highly unlikely that he’d want the job done partially or incorrectly only to have it fail again later, especially if that meant he wouldn’t make his targets under any possible recovery plan. Until we know what exactly his concerns are, how do we know how to find the win-win in that situation?

In dealing with any party, a highly effective maintenance organization should seek to find out what the concerns of the party are before formulating a response.

“If you want to interact effectively with me, to influence me, you first need to understand me” – Steven Covey