A broad description of the major steps in a FRACAS for existing equipment.

1. The Key to Improving Your
Availability is FRACAS
by
Jim Taylor
CRE, CPE, CPMM
Director of Operations,
Machinery Management Solutions, Inc.
www.machineryhealthcare.com
http://blog.machineryhealthcare.com

2. Key Takeaway:
Effective root cause elimination can be done by
the average maintenance professional
michaelcardus

3. You work in a facility or plant.

4. You’re a Maintenance professional:
A Crafts Person, a Planner, a Supervisor, a
Maintenance Manager, or an Engineer.
theakshay.

5. Low availability and repeat failures on your
equipment is affecting your production and
customer service.

6. You want to find and eliminate these
failures.

7. To keep track of it
all, you need a
system.
A
Failure Reporting,
Analysis, and
Corrective Action
System
(FRACAS).
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8. First, You must
capture as much
information about
FSI
the Event as you Failure
can. Scene
Investigation

9. You must capture the details of the Event in
enough detail to do effective failure analysis.
As found condition
Failed components
Operating parameters
Sequence of events
Fluid levels
Signs of over temperature or pressure

10. You must capture the timeline of the Event in
order to reconstruct the event.
T0 – time of event
T1 – time of trouble report
T2 – maintenance on scene
T3 – trouble shooting complete, parts ordered
T4 – parts on site
T5 – repairs complete
T6 – test complete
T7 – system back on line

11. The data you capture must be stored in a way to
make analysis as easy as possible.

12. We need them
Capture the event to calculate
times and metrics such as:
forensics data.
MTBF
MTTR
MLDT

13. Use your DCS/SCADA/PLC to capture times,
parameters, production information.

14. Collect forensic data for later analysis.

15. In the case of manual entry, you must hold
people accountable!

16. Capture it in a
usable format.

17. The operator & craftsman must be
complete and accurate in their assessment
and narrative of the event.

18. Do you like to write? Nether do I. Neither do our
operators & craftsmen. So we have to teach
them to write in a simple, declarative sentences.

19. Simple declarative sentences
Declarative sentences are used to
convey information or to make
statements:
David plays the piano.
I hope you can come tomorrow.
We've forgotten the milk.
This declarative sentence is spoken by
Don Corleone (played by Marlon
Brando) in the movie The Godfather
(1972).

20. Make data
collection as
automatic & easy
as possible.
A walk in the park.

21. PDA’s, tablet’s, etc. are cheap.
Strongly consider digital work orders

22. You can use drop downs, radio buttons,
pick lists, etc. to make it easy to collect
specific categories of data.

23. Don’t allow work order closeout until all
information is complete!

24. Second: Conduct
a Failure Analysis
to find the real
reason for the
event.

25. Your Primary Objective
Prevention,
Not Blame!

26. • Kepner-Tregoe
• 5 Whys
• Cause Mapping
• Apollo RCA
There are many • Fault Tree Analysis
available • Success Tree Analysis
techniques. • Failure Modes, Effects and
Criticality Analysis
• Management Oversight & Risk
Tree (MORT)
• …

27. A simple method
5 Whys

28. A complex one
Fault Tree Analysis

29. There is not
usually one single
cause

30. Types of Causes
(Required by process?)
Lacquer
(yes)
(Flammable)
Fire in
Oxygen
paint (yes)
in air
tank
Ignition (no)
source

31. Action and Condition causes
Lacquer
(Condition)
(Flammable)
Fire in
Oxygen
paint (Condition)
in air
tank
Craftsperson
drops non- (Action)
safe wrench.

32. Don’t stop too soon
Why was craftsperson using a non-safe wrench?
Is oxygen really required by the process?
Is a water-based lacquer required?
…

33. Cause mapping
And/Or
Try to use two Fault tree
techniques to
And/Or
confirm
Kepner-Tregoe
And/Or
…

34. I like back of the envelope calculations to
make sure I’m talking reality.

35. Third: develop a
corrective action
plan.

36. You can use the
RCM decision
tree to decide on
the correct
procedure.

37. As you can see, the decision tree is biased
towards Condition Assessment.
Will the failure have
a direct and adverse No
effect on safety or
environment?
Will the failure have a
Yes direct and adverse No
Yes effect on operations
(quantity or quality)?
Will the failure result in
other economic loss
Yes (high cost damage to
Is there an effective No machines or system)?
Condition Monitoring No
ate
technology/approach?
Yes
Is there an effective No ndid -
Ca or
Preventive
F
3tree.vsd
Maintenance task?
Yes
Develop & schedule Develop & schedule Redesign system
Condition Monitoring PM task. or accept risk. Run-to-Fail
task.

38. You may find redesign is best option in some
cases.
Will the failure have
a direct and adverse No
effect on safety or
environment?
Will the failure have a
Yes direct and adverse No
Yes effect on operations
(quantity or quality)?
Will the failure result in
other economic loss
Yes (high cost damage to
Is there an effective No machines or system)?
Condition Monitoring No
ate
technology/approach?
Yes
Is there an effective No ndid -
Ca or
Preventive
F
3tree.vsd
Maintenance task?
Yes
Develop & schedule Develop & schedule Redesign system
Condition Monitoring PM task. or accept risk. Run-to-Fail
task.

39. Make sure the
procedure is both
effective and Effective
applicable. and
Applicable

40. An Applicable procedure
actually improves the situation.

41. An Effective procedure
costs less to do the procedure
than to suffer the failure.

42. Develop a
corrective action
plan in enough
detail to enable
effective
application.

43. The Job plan should have step by step actions.

44. You now have a Job Plan that should either
eliminate the cause of the failures or give you
enough lead time to manage the failure.

45. Forth: Implement
a system of
accountability

46. SMART Objective

47. Individual responsibility and authority

48. Include on agenda of the weekly planning
meeting

49. So what has
our FRACAS
accomplished

50. We started with a piece of equipment that was
causing problems.

51. We did a Root Cause Analysis to find out
what was causing the problems.

52. Then we developed an Action Plan to
eliminate the cause.

53. We now must put that Plan into action and track
the results.

54. If we do this effectively, we should see an
increase in Ao and a decrease in costs.
Goal
Avoided Avoided
Managed
Surprise Managed
Surprise

55. Key Takeaway:
You can perform this kind of analysis.
theakshay.

56. Do it and you’ll eliminate most failures,
and you’ll have a happy customer.
Muffet

57. Your Next Step
(Homework)
Within the next week pick a recent Event:
Collect as much information about the Event as you can.
Interview the operators and the craftsmen. Look at the replaced
and/or the broken parts. Record the details on a computer
(Excel).
Perform a RCFA.
Develop a way to manage that failure using RCM principles.
Write and implement a Job Plan to correct the problem.
Give me a call if you have questions or want help.

58. Questions?
Comments?
Jim Taylor
CRE, CPE, CPMM
Director of Operations,
Machinery Management Solutions, Inc.
www.machineryhealthcare.com
http://blog.machineryhealthcare.com
765-366-4285