Machinery Lubrication magazine published by Noria Corporation
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26 Reliable Plant Annual Edition | www . reliableplant.com IMPROVED RELIABILITY First Seen in Reliable Plant, October 2023 Shon Isenhour | Eruditio PITFALL # 1 Not Digging Deep Enough into the Problem is pitfall manifests itself typically in two ways: the first is getting stuck on the physical causes, which leads to replacing a lot of parts and solving the symptoms but not the true problem. e second, and arguably worse, is when the practitioner drills down only to the human causes where it becomes a blame game. A gentleman by the name of W. E. Deming addressed this when he said, "blame the system not the people." You must go deeper. e system or systemic causes allow for many if not all the human mistakes to exist. By first understanding the systemic problems, you can then can address the human ones. Under these issues is yet another layer of what we call latent roots, which are either organizational or cultural in nature. If you don't understand these lower-level causes, your solution may be thwarted despite you technically addressing the problem. PITFALL # 2 Conducting Too Many Root Cause Investigations Per Month e RCA triggers can be set up to work off a certain amount of downtime, cost, lost production, safety or a combination of multiple elements. But they should be set up to change as you mature into RCA. If you have the triggers set too low or if you are relying on manage- ment to ask for the investigation, then you could have too many RCA investigations and reports to complete each month. It is also important not to forget that for every RCA there are multiple action items that must be assigned, completed and verified. Can your systems and resources support that if you are busy generating RCA reports every time the wind blows? My belief is that beginner RCA facilitators can handle two good RCAs per month, and triggers should be set accordingly. RC-YAY! FINDING SUCCESS WITH ROOT CAUSE ANALYSIS A N N U A L E D I T I O N Many industry practitioners inherently know that Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is the right thing to do, but very few are having true success in finding the real return on investment. Root Cause Analysis can be a very powerful tool for eliminating defects and increasing efficiency and profits. Well, if that statement is true then why are we not celebrating it more? I have noticed eight common pitfalls that prevent practi- tioners from getting maximum value from their RCA efforts. If you can manage them effectively, you can increase your likelihood for "RC-Yay"!