Machinery Lubrication

44 Reliable Plant | www . reliableplant.com Machinery Lubrication | www . machinerylubrication.com 2025 Annual ROOT CAUSE ANALYSIS "normal" is your reference point for effective troubleshooting. Without this clear, measurable benchmark, your troubleshooting will quickly devolve, and the probability of success is limited. LESSON 4: Evaluate the Application Most problems can be resolved by determining the difference between the asset's design and its actual application. Statistically, 27% of asset failures result from using assets in applications outside their design boundaries. From my experience, at least 50% of your troubleshooting tasks can be resolved this way. When comparing asset applications against their intended use, consider everything. Do not let bias impede important comparison. Looking at the mode of operation, ask these questions: How is the asset started and shut down, and how are speed changes made? Are the incoming materials or flow within the original design constraints? Is the output consistent with the asset's designed work capabilities? I once consulted on a first-of-a-kind chemical process line that from startup had chronic, catastrophic failures with a wet grinder. is created a bottleneck and single-point failure in a continuous system. After the third failure in nine months, the general manager was convinced the culprit was improper maintenance and asked me to find a solution. Following the application evaluation, I consulted the system's original design in detail. With this knowledge, an application review quickly isolated the reason behind the chronic wet grinder failures. e in-feed to the grinder was rated for 12,000 pounds per hour of long-chain polymer but was being fed into a wet grinder only designed to process 3,500 pounds per hour. But that was the trigger, not the root cause. e root cause was that the company had deliberately downsized the wet grinder during the building process to save money. Consequently, the solution was expensive. e piping had to be modified to install parallel wet grinders with enough capacity to process the 12,000 pounds per hour coming from the in-feed. Once this was complete, the line began operating normally. is is typical of what you will find when following the design and application review sequence. LESSON 5: Choose the Best Approach ere are endless troubleshooting approaches to resolving problems, but which is the most effective? roughout my career, I've come to understand that none are perfect; all can face serious limitations and be misused. However, one common factor in every approach is the need for a qualified team. Teams typically include operators, maintenance technicians, engineers, and subject matter experts. ese teams often possess the combined knowledge and unique experience needed to resolve the problem. Unfortunately, teams can devolve due to biased opinions and contradicting ideas, often resulting in the most dominant member becoming the root cause "decider." e keys to team effectiveness are: Including a qualified, unbiased facilitator to keep individual agendas at bay and the team focused on the problem being investigated. Setting a time limit for the effort to keep the team focused (with facilitation) on the true issues. I have found that if a team cannot solve a problem within ten calendar days, it's unlikely they will ever solve it. LESSON 6: Never Assume Anything I cannot overstate the importance of utilizing documented facts when troubleshooting. Every time that an assumption is made, the effort risks devolving into chasing squirrels. Never assume anything. Incorrect assumptions mean efforts are wasted chasing false problems. For example, you should not assume that operators follow the best practices or that maintenance technicians always perform sustaining maintenance. It's not always possible to verify everything, but avoid using assumptions, opinions, or any other form of undocumented or unproven information in the troubleshooting process. Troubleshooting must be based on facts, not suppositions. LESSON 7: Look Beyond the Obvious One of the more serious potential mistakes in the troubleshooting process is to stop short of the true root cause(s). e tendency is to assign the formal reason for a problem or failure as human error, such as operator error or failure to perform the required main- tenance tasks. ere are two problems with this conclusion. First, human error is the symptom or trigger of the event, not the root cause. e event will recur unless the underlying reason behind the error is identified and corrected. Such causes might include an incorrect procedure, faulty instructions from a supervisor, or even home- life problems. e second problem is there are no benefits to finding a scapegoat. e focus of too many troubleshooting efforts is finding someone to blame, thinking this will solve the problem. is is very rarely the case. LESSON 8: Evaluate Your Hypothesis Once you have determined what you believe to be the root cause(s), evaluate your hypoth- esis and confirm your conclusions before finalizing a report. Remember, a solution is just a hypothesis until it's proven correct. is might require setting up controlled tests to determine the cause and effect of inputs that might have contributed to the problem. It might require using predictive or non-destructive testing methodology to quantify the impact of controlled inputs. Regardless of the approach, all potential root causes and possible corrective actions must be evaluated before the troubleshooting effort can be considered complete. LESSON 9: Prove Your Hypothesis Wrong If you hate to be wrong like me, this advice is for you. Before signing your name to a troubleshooting report, prove your conclusions wrong. If you don't, someone else will. One of the many things I have learned over my career is that when problems occur,

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