course | Failure Elimination & Reliability Improvement

Finding the Failures Worth Eliminating
 

Recognizing Reliability Losses
 

• Distinguish isolated equipment events from recurring reliability problems. 
• Examine how repeated failures affect downtime, maintenance workload, cost, and operational performance. 
• Identify equipment that consumes disproportionate maintenance attention. 
   

Detecting Failure Patterns
 

• Analyze work orders, breakdown records, downtime history, and maintenance observations. 
• Identify recurring components, locations, operating conditions, and failure sequences. 
• Build a Bad Actor Profile to prioritize equipment for reliability improvement. 

Reconstructing What Really Happened
 

Building the Failure Story
 

• Establish the sequence of events before, during, and immediately after equipment failure. 
• Separate verified evidence from assumptions and incomplete explanations. 
• Connect operating conditions, maintenance history, and equipment behavior to the event. 
   

Understanding How the Asset Failed
 

• Distinguish the visible symptom from the actual failure mechanism. 
• Examine physical, operational, maintenance, and human contributors. 
• Develop a Failure Evidence Map for a realistic equipment breakdown scenario. 

Moving from Symptoms to Causes
 

Investigating Cause Relationships
 

• Apply structured questioning to move beyond the immediate technical explanation. 
• Explore interactions between equipment condition, operating practices, maintenance activities, and work processes. 
• Avoid stopping the investigation at convenient or unsupported causes. 
   

Testing Root Cause Conclusions
 

• Use available evidence to confirm or challenge suspected causes.
• Distinguish root causes from contributing factors and consequences. 
• Complete a Root Cause Investigation Challenge involving multiple plausible explanations for the same failure. 

Designing Actions that Prevent Recurrence
 

Selecting Effective Corrective Actions
 

• Develop actions that directly address verified failure causes. 
• Compare equipment modifications, maintenance changes, operating controls, and process improvements. 
• Avoid corrective actions that simply increase inspections or maintenance frequency without justification. 
   

Prioritizing Reliability Improvements
 

• Evaluate corrective actions according to expected reliability benefit, feasibility, cost, and urgency. 
• Assign ownership and implementation requirements for selected actions. 
• Build a Failure Elimination Action Plan for a recurring equipment problem. 

Proving that the Failure Has Been Eliminated
 

Verifying Improvement Effectiveness
 

• Define what evidence will demonstrate that corrective actions are working. 
• Monitor recurrence, downtime, failure intervals, and relevant equipment performance. 
• Distinguish temporary improvement from sustained reliability change. 
   

Creating a Failure Elimination Cycle
 

• Capture lessons from completed investigations for use across similar assets. 
• Identify emerging bad actors before repeated failures become normalized. 
• Complete a Reliability Improvement Case from failure identification through verified elimination and lessons learned.