The key to improving your availability is fracas

by Jim Taylor

CRE, CPE, CPMM

Director of Operations, Machinery Management Solutions, Inc.

www.machineryhealthcare.comhttp://blog.machineryhealthcare.com

The Key to Improving Your Availability is FRACAS

Key Takeaway: Effective root cause elimination can be done by

the average maintenance professional

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You work in a facility or plant.

You’re a Maintenance professional: A Crafts Person, a Planner, a Supervisor, a

Maintenance Manager, or an Engineer.

theakshay.

Low availability and repeat failures on your equipment is affecting your production and

customer service.

You want to find and eliminate these failures.

To keep track of it all, you need a

system.

A Failure Reporting,

Analysis, and Corrective Action

System (FRACAS).

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First, You must capture as much

information about the Event as you

can.

FSIFailure Scene

Investigation

You must capture the details of the Event in enough detail to do effective failure analysis.

As found condition

Failed components

Operating parameters

Sequence of events

Fluid levels

Signs of over temperature or pressure

You must capture the timeline of the Event in order to reconstruct the event.

T0 – time of eventT1 – time of trouble reportT2 – maintenance on sceneT3 – trouble shooting complete, parts orderedT4 – parts on siteT5 – repairs completeT6 – test completeT7 – system back on line

The data you capture must be stored in a way to make analysis as easy as possible.

Capture the event times and

forensics data.

We need them to calculate metrics such

as:

MTBF

MTTR

MLDT

Use your DCS/SCADA/PLC to capture times, parameters, production information.

Collect forensic data for later analysis.

In the case of manual entry, you must hold people accountable!

Capture it in a usable format.

The operator & craftsman must be complete and accurate in their assessment

and narrative of the event.

Do you like to write? Nether do I. Neither do our operators & craftsmen. So we have to teach

them to write in a simple, declarative sentences.

Simple declarative sentences

Declarative sentences are used to convey information or to make statements:

David plays the piano. I hope you can come tomorrow. We've forgotten the milk.

This declarative sentence is spoken by Don Corleone (played by Marlon Brando) in the movie The Godfather (1972).

Make data collection as

automatic & easy as possible.

A walk in the park.

PDA’s, tablet’s, etc. are cheap. Strongly consider digital work orders

You can use drop downs, radio buttons, pick lists, etc. to make it easy to collect

specific categories of data.

Don’t allow work order closeout until all information is complete!

Second: Conduct a Failure Analysis

to find the real reason for the

event.

Your Primary Objective

Prevention, Not Blame!

There are many available

techniques.

• Kepner-Tregoe

• 5 Whys

• Cause Mapping

• Apollo RCA

• Fault Tree Analysis

• Success Tree Analysis

• Failure Modes, Effects and

Criticality Analysis

• Management Oversight & Risk

Tree (MORT)• …

A simple method

5 Whys

A complex one

Fault Tree Analysis

There is not usually one single

cause

Types of Causes

Fire in paint tank

Ignition source

Oxygen in air

Lacquer (Flammable)

(Required by process?)

(yes)

(no)

(yes)

Action and Condition causes

Fire in paint tank

Craftsperson drops non-

safe wrench.

Oxygen in air

Lacquer (Flammable)

(Condition)

(Action)

(Condition)

Don’t stop too soon

Why was craftsperson using a non-safe wrench?

Is oxygen really required by the process?

Is a water-based lacquer required?

…

Try to use two techniques to

confirm

Cause mapping

And/Or

Fault tree

And/Or

Kepner-Tregoe

And/Or

…

I like back of the envelope calculations to make sure I’m talking reality.

Third: develop a corrective action

plan.

You can use the RCM decision

tree to decide on the correct procedure.

As you can see, the decision tree is biased towards Condition Assessment.

Develop & scheduleCondition Monitoring

task.Develop & schedule

PM task.Redesign system

or accept risk. Run-to-Fail

Will the failure havea direct and adverseeffect on safety or

environment?Will the failure have a

direct and adverseeffect on operations(quantity or quality)?

Will the failure result inother economic loss(high cost damage tomachines or system)?Is there an effective

Condition Monitoringtechnology/approach?

Is there an effectivePreventive

Maintenance task?

No

No

No

No

No

Yes

YesYes

Yes

Yes

3tre

e.vs

dCandidate

For -

You may find redesign is best option in some cases.

Develop & scheduleCondition Monitoring

task.Develop & schedule

PM task.Redesign system

or accept risk. Run-to-Fail

Will the failure havea direct and adverseeffect on safety or

environment?Will the failure have a

direct and adverseeffect on operations(quantity or quality)?

Will the failure result inother economic loss(high cost damage tomachines or system)?Is there an effective

Condition Monitoringtechnology/approach?

Is there an effectivePreventive

Maintenance task?

No

No

No

No

No

Yes

YesYes

Yes

Yes

3tre

e.vs

dCandidate

For -

Make sure the procedure is both

effective and applicable.

Effective

and

Applicable

An Applicable procedure

actually improves the situation.

An Effective procedure

costs less to do the procedure

than to suffer the failure.

Develop a corrective action plan in enough detail to enable

effective application.

The Job plan should have step by step actions.

You now have a Job Plan that should either eliminate the cause of the failures or give you

enough lead time to manage the failure.

Forth: Implement a system of

accountability

SMART Objective

S)pecificM)easurableA)cheviableR)ealisticT)ime limited

Individual responsibility and authority

Include on agenda of the weekly planning meeting

So what has our FRACAS

accomplished

We started with a piece of equipment that was causing problems.

We did a Root Cause Analysis to find out what was causing the problems.

Then we developed an Action Plan to eliminate the cause.

We now must put that Plan into action and track the results.

If we do this effectively, we should see an increase in Ao and a decrease in costs.

Goal

Managed

Avoided

Surprise Managed

Avoided

Surprise

Key Takeaway:You can perform this kind of analysis.

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Do it and you’ll eliminate most failures, and you’ll have a happy customer.

Muffet

Within the next week pick a recent Event:

Collect as much information about the Event as you can. Interview the operators and the craftsmen. Look at the replaced and/or the broken parts. Record the details on a computer (Excel).Perform a RCFA. Develop a way to manage that failure using RCM principles. Write and implement a Job Plan to correct the problem.

Give me a call if you have questions or want help.

Your Next Step (Homework)

Questions?Comments?

Jim TaylorCRE, CPE, CPMM

Director of Operations, Machinery Management Solutions, Inc.

www.machineryhealthcare.comhttp://blog.machineryhealthcare.com

765-366-4285