Is the Root Cause: “Lack of Equipment Strategy”?

We received a great question from one of our clients about equipment strategy.

The Question

“We have found a few cases where lack of an appropriate equipment strategy is the ‘root cause’ of a failure. For example, the machine has not been given the correct criticality rating so that it receives the right level of preventive maintenance, servicing, etc. Or the preventive maintenance regime is not sufficient to keep it running well. It was not given the right level of PM at the start.

Where do you think this fits in the TapRooT® Root Cause Tree structure? I have a particular interest in this as:

• it is regularly surfacing as a finding in investigations and
• it is an area we can influence in our reliability programs for plant equipment.”

Mark Paradies’ Answer about “Lack of Equipment Strategy” as the Root Cause of a Failure

I see this as an Equipment Difficulty issue . . .

I took out my Root Cause Tree® Dictionary and on page 19 it asks:

Should a reasonable Preventive or Predictive Maintenance (PM) program have prevented the equipment, software difficulty or malfunction?

Your info:

We have found a few cases where lack of an appropriate equipment strategy is the “root cause” of a failure. For example, the machine has not been given the correct criticality rating so that it receives the right level of preventive maintenance, servicing, etc. Or the preventive maintenance regime is not sufficient to keep it running well. It was not given the right level of PM at the start.

provides the evidence to say “yes” to that question. That means it is an Equipment Difficulty – Preventive/Predictive Maintenance issue . . .

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On page 20 it asks: “Was the failure caused by an inadequate PM/RCM/RBI Program?”

Your info:

We have found a few cases where lack of an appropriate equipment strategy is the “root cause” of a failure. For example, the machine has not been given the correct criticality rating so that it receives the right level of preventive maintenance, servicing etc. Or the preventive maintenance regime is not sufficient to keep it running well. It was not given the right level of PM at the start.

provides the evidence to say “yes” to that question. That means it is an Equipment Difficulty – Preventive/Predictive Maintenance – PM NI issue . . .

NEXT

for the ones that this applies to:

We have found a few cases where lack of an appropriate equipment strategy is the “root cause” of a failure. For example, the machine has not been given the correct criticality rating so that it receives the right level of preventive maintenance, servicing etc.

On page 21 you would answer “yes” to:

Should there have been PM for the particular equipment/component that failed or software/code that malfunctioned?

That would make this a Equipment Difficulty – Preventive/Predictive Maintenance – PM NI – No PM for Equip issue.

Note that this is one level above a root cause. Therefore you could make a note in the comments field of the TapRooT® Software on the “No PM for Equip” box that would say:

Root Cause of failure to have PM is: “lack of an appropriate equipment strategy – wrong criticality rating given to equipment”

for the other case:

Or the preventive maintenance regime is not sufficient to keep it running well. It was not given the right level of PM at the start.

This would give us a “yes” to the question on page 22:

Was PM/RBI being performed but better PM/RBI was available and wasn’t being used when it should have been used?

That makes that problem a Equipment Difficulty – Preventive/Predictive Maintenance – PM NI – PM for Equip NI issue.

Once again note that this is one level above a root cause. Therefore you could make a note in the comments field of the TapRooT® Software on the “No PM for Equip” box that would say:

Root Cause of failure to have PM is: “lack of an appropriate equipment strategy – wrong criticality rating given to equipment – insufficient PM scheduled from the start.”

Hope this kind of guidance helps! Learn more about equipment troubleshooting on our Equifactor® Equipment Troubleshooting page.