The Purpose of Failure Coding is not … Failure Coding
The Purpose of Failure Coding is not … Failure Coding
Failure coding is not the endgame but all too often this becomes the only conversation. Why does this happen? Sometimes we humans shy away from the harder questions by focusing on the easier ones. Trying to create a failure data structure that is accurate, complete and “looks good” seems to be our primary focus. Unfortunately, no one asked the reliability team what it is they need to make better decisions.
Has the Asset Management Vision Been Lost?
What is the purpose of asset management? Do you have an asset management policy statement? Is the benefit of having a CMMS within asset management clearly stated? Is failure coding and failure analysis considered as an important objective? I personally do not know of a better way to reduce reactive maintenance.
Is there a Definitions Library?
It's hard to communicate when definitions are unclear. Maybe the confusion is due to an overall lack of asset management knowledge; or, maybe nobody ever expected the CMMS to actually be used by reliability leaders.
What is Failure Data?
Unless there is a definition and business rule that clearly states what type of failure data is important for decision-making and taking action, then this probably won’t happen.?Below is an example of a power tool in my woodworking shop that failed. Notice that the failure class and asset problem code are useful, but it is the failure mode that enables real decision making.
Are Strategic Roles in Place??
The goal should be to design the CMMS to support failure analysis and reliability engineering. Key roles (tactical) include CMMS administrator, maintenance manager, maintenance supervisor, and planner/scheduler. That said, some organizations have strategic positions which promote reliability-based maintenance, such as, asset manager, reliability team, core team, reliability engineer, business analyst, and gatekeeper role.
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My point is this: Someone in this strategic group needs to be accountable for the vision, and someone should have requested the CMMS to provide the failure data and reporting to manage by exception, i.e., a bad actor report. Someone in this group should have designed it, implemented it, and required the reliability team to run it. Further, they should have reverse-engineered linking inputs to outputs.?Who is your reliability leader?
What Should the Ideal Bad Actor Report Look Like?
The best output would not simply stop at the top 10 list. Instead, it would allow further drill down on the RCM 3-part failure mode. With this additional information the reliability team would not only make better decisions but also take action.
Taking Action is the Endgame
Software, process, and organization. This is how an organization should use the CMMS to improve the bottom line. By focusing on recurring failures, you can reduce reactive maintenance and unplanned downtime. Having good failure data helps leadership evaluate the need for sensors, precision maintenance training, and repair/replace decisions. In my workshop example, my action was to replace the drive sprocket on my belt sander with a metal part instead of plastic - which was easy to figure out. But with a bad actor report, the software will search thousands of records (i.e., assets) in seconds to find those assets with the greatest problems (per your sort metric) and single these out for analysis. The next step is to take action.
If interested in my book on this subject of failure modes, it can be found on Amazon.
Mtce & Reliability Engineering Enthusiast And RCM Practitioner
1 年That one picture sums it up very well the situation we find ourselves in with the created need for 'data driven' decision making. Is this suggesting that you don't need field/plant experience to operate remotely from HQs?
Maintenance, Engineering & Project Management Professional
1 年Great article. Thanks John Reeve
Published Author, Renewable Energy Asset Management Practice Consultant, Domain Advisor & Trainer
1 年Thanks John for your interest. There are neither stated nor implied goals; nor do they have a roadmap for extracting value. This is"outsourced" to the O&M head who will have to figure out ways to utilise the resources(in this case both manpower and the analytics software package). I have integrated the CMMS within this analytics software package to "close the loop". Notifications are moved to the CMMS for field validation, or WO creation. For reliability studies, I have included a customised version of the ISO 14224 to create an asset hierarchy that can support reliability efforts. Though this is a lot of hard work, the efforts are yet to be validated through noticeable improvement & profitability. Since I happen to be on the "prevention" side, proving improvement or profitability is going to be that much difficult. Thanks for your suggestions John; always a pleasure going through your posts.