Maintenance - Why Analyze Failure Modes?

An individual machine can fail for several reasons. A group of machines, or a system such as a production line can fail for hundreds of reasons. For an entire plant, the number can rise into the thousands, if not tens of thousands. Many managers are intimidated by the thought of the time and effort involved in identifying all of these failure modes, and abandon the effort. By doing so, the maintenance function is constrained to a day-to-day basis, and maintenance is managed at the failure mode level. These failure modes are recorded, planned for, and dealt with after they occur which by definition is reactive maintenance.

Proactive maintenance means dealing with events before they occur - or at least deciding how they will be dealt with should they occur. To do this we need to know what events are likely to occur - failure modes. If we wish to apply truly proactive maintenance to any physical asset we must try to identify all of the failure modes which are reasonably likely to occur. Once each failure mode has been identified, it is then possible to consider the consequences of that failure and to decide what (if anything) should be done to anticipate, prevent, detect, or correct it - perhaps even to design it out.

Proactive maintenance is a critical element of your operational excellence strategies. Synchronous experts are adept at helping you develop effective, practical, no-nonsense strategies for proactive maintenance and machine reliability. Send us an information request to Sales@SynchronousLLC.com , or review our portfolio of service offerings at www.SynchronousLLC.com