Knowing when a piece of equipment is going to fail (predictive maintenance) is much more difficult than making it last long (proactive maintenance). Even more complex is root cause analysis (RCA) which is performed postmortem, like an autopsy.

Still, reliability professionals are increasingly stressing the importance of performing RCAs following all failures of critical machinery. As odd as it sounds, it is more productive to study failures than successes.

After all, an apparent success may actually be a failure in disguise; more like a problem waiting to happen. Studying failures teaches us insightful lessons in developing predictive and proactive maintenance strategy.

Root cause failure analysis is a process of working backward through a sequence of events or steps that led to functional failure of the machine.

The post Root Cause Analysis for Lubrication Failures appeared first on Tesibis.

Abnormal wear is not like a bad rash, which tends to go away on its own in time. Instead, it’s more like early-stage cancer, which requires intervention and treatment. Oil analysis has exceptional abilities to detect abnormal conditions, both root cause (like dirty oil) and predictive (active failure in progress).

Root cause failure analysis is post-mortem. It starts with failure and works backward in search of one or more root causes. The knowledge gained reveals a plan of needed change that will prevent or delay the recurrence of similar failures. Failure is indeed a strategic teacher of better ways to design, manufacture and maintain machines.

The whole purpose of machine condition monitoring, like oil analysis, is to enable organizations to foretell the future. It produces data that points to the existing problems and the seriousness of these problems. Action is required to confirm a problem’s existence, determine and verify the root cause, and finally to remedy the problem. Sadly, this is where most oil analysis programs are delinquent. The fault lies equally with the laboratory and the end user.

The post The Power of Root Cause Pre-failure Analysis appeared first on Tesibis.