Machinery Lubrication magazine published by Noria Corporation
Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1522439
Reliable Plant Annual Edition | www . reliableplant.com 27 PITFALL # 3 Too Much Time Spent on the Report (Not Enough on Solutions and Follow-Up) I am sure very few of you work for a company that makes RCA reports as a product. My guess is your company probably makes widgets and a three-pound, five-inch-thick final RCA report does not add anything to the bottom line or any more margin on your widgets. Please remember the company is not paid by the pound of report, we are paid by the solutions implemented and the return on investment they generate. I have a one-page report that I will share with you as a model for your RCA reports if you send an email to sisenhour@eruditio.com. PITFALL # 4 Lack of Applicable RCA Tools and Processes Many sites have good processes and bad tools, or just the opposite, and because of that missing side they miss the mark on results. One particular site I visited in Brazil had great processes for problem iden- tification and prioritization, but the reliability engineers were using only the Five Whys as their RCA tool. e Five Whys tool alone does not provide the correct level of analysis needed for many reliability problems. You need both a process and a set of RCA tools to match the problem you are solving. PITFALL # 5 Facilitators Don't Ask the Right Question and Miss Major Causal Chains One of the exercises we do in our RCA training workshops forces the participants to interview the parties involved in a failure. You would be amazed at how hard this is for some learners. ey just can't come up with the right questions to ask. To help to mitigate this one, use something like design and applica- tion review and follow up with change analysis to perfect your questions before you start in-depth investigation and interviews. If you do this correctly, you'll reduce the amount of time you spend stopping and gathering additional data during the analysis phase. PITFALL # 6 RCA Findings and Solutions Not Verified for Effective Elimination of the Original Problem When this step is done correctly, the site uses quantifiable metrics to measure the solutions that were identified, and they are repeated at intervals to verify a sustainable long-term solution. PITFALL # 7 Organization Neglects to Focus on Ensuring Best Return on Investment If you use the correct tools and you dig into the problem, you should be left with potentially multiple solutions. Once you have this identified, you can evaluate the cost and the effectiveness of the solution to see which action or combination of actions gives you the best overall return on the problem. In the end, RCA becomes less about finding the "root cause" and more about the most effective and lowest cost-mitigation or elimi- nation strategy. PITFALL # 8 Not Following the Process from Start to Finish While Pitfall number four talks about not having proper processes in place, the eighth and final one is not following your processes through to the end and making sure you execute every step, every time. is one has been born out of companies coming to us and saying, "Hey, we are doing RCA and not getting results." My immediate response was "Balderdash!" ere is no way you are doing RCA and not getting results. Our students demonstrate the power of RCA day in and day out as they progress through their IBL training and certification program. ere must be another root cause for your failure. And lo and behold, there is: the process broke because someone did not complete one of the required steps. For example, they investigate the problem and generate an awesome RCA report and then never have the tenacity to implement the corrective actions. And their process stops there! You did some very visible activities, but then you stopped before you got to the point of value creation. FOLLOW THE PROCESS After reading through these eight common causes of root cause failure, I hope you were able to recognize a few and can eliminate them from taking the profits out of your process. Develop a strategy and spend a little time mapping out the plan to avoid the most common pitfalls with RCAs. en, maybe you, too, can experience a moment of RC-Yay! Root Cause Analysis can be a very powerful tool for eliminating defects and increasing efficiency and profits.