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How Has Root
Cause Failure Analysis Failed to Meet it's Potential?
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Written
by Kenneth C. Latino
P/PM Technology, December
1997
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Root Cause Failure Analysis (RCFA) has become a big "buzzword" over the
past few years. It certainly has the potential of improving our facility
operations by a significant amount. But with any new acronym there are
also many pitfalls. |
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The concept of RCFA is simple. Select a failure that is important, put
a team of experts on the team to analyze the failure and then implement
the teams recommendations. Simple right? As the old saying goes, if it
sounds to good to be true it probably is. |
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Let?s take a look at some of the main reasons why we cannot seem to generate
the quantum leaps in productivity we seek from utilizing RCFA. As I see
it, there are four main categories or reasons that we cannot seem to get
this process to move mountains. |
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Lack A Disciplined Approach
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Inconsistent Reporting
Mechanism
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Let?s take a look at each of these problems individually. Many facilities
read an article about RCFA and think that all they need to do is send some
people to RCFA training and they will return to solve the world?s problems.
It is important to understand that training alone is not the cure all.
In order for the trainee to be effective at implementing the new found
skill in the field, he or she must be given the time and resources to be
effective. In my experience, the leading cause of failure in RCFA is a
lack of time to apply the technique. |
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It is virtually impossible to perform proactive activities in the field
when so much reactive work exists. Let?s face it, reactive work is always
going to take precedence over proactive work. That seems to be the mind-set,
anyway. |
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The second major problem that we have is the lack of focus. When the newly
trained RCFA graduates comes back to the facility they are expected to
work on every failure that comes down the pike. After all, they?re the
RCFA gurus now. It is important to realize, we should not do a true RCFA
on every failure. There are simply too many failures. |
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If we are looking for quantum leaps in productivity, we need to be very
selective in which failures we decide to do RCFA on. My experience, coupled
with the experience of my clients, demonstrates that it is just a very
few failures that represent a majority of the losses that we experience
every year in a manufacturing facility. This presents us with a great opportunity
and a great dilemma. The opportunity is obvious, simply delineate those
few failures that represent the most amount of loss and dedicate your resources
to those few problems. The dilemma arises when the boss wants you to either
work on his or her reactive work or even worse their "political failure
of the day". These are those failures that are important on Monday but
are virtually forgotten about on Friday. |
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Enough about the RCFA infrastructure, lets get into the nuts and bolts
of RCFA. Disciplined RCFA and human nature are like mixing oil and water.
They just don?t mix! People who are "experts" do not usually want to sit
around on a team trying to convince everyone that they know what the answer
is. They just want to go out and fix the problem. I do not know how many
times I have walked into a RCFA team meeting and I am faced with five or
so "experts" who all know what the root cause is. The unfortunate thing
is they all have a different opinion. Human nature rears it ugly head when
I ask each of the experts to back up their assumption with data. That is
when I get the blank stares. For whatever reason, we tend to be poor data
collectors. It is easier to go out into the field and use trial and error
in lieu of collecting the proper data and analyzing it. |
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Now I am not saying that we do not do any failure analysis out in the field.
What ends up happening most of the time is that we each have our own way
of analyzing or troubleshooting. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn?t.
Even when it does work, we rarely know what we did to make it work. We
change many variables until it seems to work. This, unfortunately, is a
very costly way to solve problems. We need to focus on the discipline of
RCFA to truly get to the root causes of our most significant failures. |
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The last pitfall, and potentially the most dangerous, is the lack of a
consistent reporting mechanism to inform decision makers of our findings
so that we can affect real change in the facility. I have seen many failure
analyzes fail at this stage because the analysis team was unable to articulate
their findings and recommendations to decision makers in a persuasive manner.
This is a terrible thing after you spent so much time and resource getting
to the actual root causes of a problem only to find that nothing is going
to change as a result of it. |
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are the Solutions? |
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Now that I have told you about all of the terrible things that can go wrong
with RCFA, let?s talk about how we can overcome some of these pitfalls. |
| Lack of Support |
Make sure the person who is setting up the RCFA approach at your facility
or company has some idea of what is involved. For instance, they should
be aware of the method that is being used and set some expectation for
how it is going to used in the field.
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The decision maker in charge of the RCFA approach should make time and
resources available to RCFA team members. I am not suggesting full-time
resources, but some dedication on a weekly basis.
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The decision maker should allow, if not expect, updates from RCFA teams
on the progress of RCFA projects as well as a completion meeting where
recommendations and action plans are presented and agreed upon.
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Decision makers should have quantitative goals as to the effectiveness
of the approach. For instance, maintenance costs will decrease by 15%,
production will increase 5%, and so on. It is important to track the success
of the approach to maintain its momentum.
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Periodic celebrations should be held and publicized as success milestones
are met.
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Successes should be exploited in corporate communications media. For instance,
we should have articles written in company newsletters, RCFA reports should
be published on the company intranet, or even industry trade magazines.
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| Lack of Focus |
Define what a failure is at your facility.
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Make a listing of the historical failures that meet your failure definition.
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Make sure that the failures on the list are real failures and not potential
failures.
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Define how many times the failure event occurs in a given year.
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Calculate how much each failure event costs when it does occur. Make sure
that you include labor, materials, downtime losses, fines, etc.
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Multiply the frequency of each failure event by the cost per occurrence
to get a total loss for each failure event.
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Prioritize the failure events by the total loss column so that you can
identify the most significant failures.
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Attack only those most significant few failures using RCFA.
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| Sample
Failure Event Data Collection Sheet |
| Lack
of A Disciplined Approach |
Set up RCFA teams with diverse team members.
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Brainstorm the appropriate RCFA data that needs to be collected to analyze.
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Determine the team charter or objective prior to analyzing the failure.
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Select a team leader to facilitate the RCFA process. Make sure the team
leader is unbiased.
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Utilize an analysis tool, like a logic tree, to help guide the teams hypotheses.
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Verify all of the team members ideas/hypotheses with hard facts and keep
a log.
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| Inconsistent Reporting
Mechanisms |
Utilize a standardized reporting mechanism that everyone in the organization
can utilize.
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Make sure the reporting mechanism includes summary information for managers
and decision makers, detailed analysis information for technical staff
members and supporting data in the appendix.
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Make sure the reporting mechanism clearly delineates recommendations for
identified root causes.
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Always provide multiple recommendation options so that decision makers
have decision making flexibility.
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Develop an effective presentation for decision makers emphasizing recommendation
implementation and action plans.
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These suggestions will help you to overcome the most important issues involved
in creating and more importantly, sustaining an effective RCFA approach. |
RCI Offers the full
range of Reliability Consulting Services and Training Programs for Industry.
We conduct facilitations, reliability assessments, FMEA & Root Cause
Failure Analysis Training - Public & On-Site.
For more information
contact:
Reliability Center, Inc.
P.O. Box 1421
Hopewell, Virginia 23860
Phone: (804) 458-0645
Fax: (804) 452-2119
Website: http://www.reliability.com
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