conducting an RCA may cost well into six figures and require several months. These costs may be intimidating to some, but the benefits obtained from correcting the major roots will eliminate huge classes of problems. The return will be many times the expenditure and will start to be realized within a few months of formal program implementation.
One thing that has to be recognized is that, because of the time, manpower, and costs involved, it is essentially impossible to conduct an RCA on every failure. The cost and possible benefits have to be recognized and judgments made to decide on the appropriate type of analysis.
When RCA Is Justified
Equipment Damage or Failure
RCFA are normally justified for those events associated with the partial or complete failure of critical production equipment, machinery, or systems. This type of incident can have a severe, negative impact on plant performance. Therefore, it often justifies the effort required to fully evaluate the event and to determine its root cause.
Operating Performance
Many a time deviations in operating performance occur without the physical failure of equipment or components. Chronic deviations may justify the use of RCFA as a means of resolving the recurring problem.
Product Quality
RCFA can be used to resolve most quality‐related problems. However, the analysis should not be used for all quality problems.
Capacity Restrictions
Many of the problems or events that occur affect a plant’s ability to consistently meet expected production or capacity rates. These problems may be suitable for RCFA, but further evaluation is recommended before beginning an analysis. After the initial investigation, if the event can be fully qualified and a cost‐effective solution not found, then a full analysis should be considered. Note that an analysis normally is not performed on random, nonrecumng events or equipment failures.
Economic Performance
Deviations in economic performance, such as high production or maintenance costs, often warrant the use of RCFA. The decision tree and specific steps required to resolve these problems vary depending on the type of problem and its forcing functions or causes.
Safety
Any event that has a potential for causing personal injury should be investigated immediately. While events in this classification may not warrant a full RCFA, they must be resolved as quickly as possible. Isolating the root cause of injury‐causing accidents or events generally is more difficult than for equipment failures and requires a different problem‐solving approach. The primary reason for this increased difficulty is that the cause often is subjective.
Top Reasons Why We Need to Perform RCFA
1 Failures simply won’t go away by fixing them all the time. We can only eliminate failures if we try to analyze them through Root Cause Failure Analysis. Then, only maintenance department can focus more on improving their asset performance.
2 To arrive at the correct solution to our equipment problemsRCFA is not about addressing all the probable causes but rather failures being looked back in reverse to determine what really cause the problem. In performing RCFA, each hypothesis is verified until we have gathered enough evidence that these are the actual facts that lead to the failure itself. In completely eliminating the problem, it is important to address not only the physical cause but both the human and the latent cause.
3 Equipment failures might induce the possibility of secondary damage. Parts that are in the process of failing such as bearings will increase the vibration of equipment, this increase in vibration would be harmful to other parts that are directly coupled to the part that induce the vibration. Oftentimes secondary damage will be more costly than the parts that initially failed
4 Being proactive will give me a sense of security. Many maintenance personnel believes that a good backlog of maintenance work will ensure them of their job security. This is not the right mindset. Traditional maintenance people is confined to repairs and fixing failures but the scope of our job is beyond boundaries, our real job is to improve our equipment reliability and the scope of maintenance is beyond boundaries CBM, Oil Analysis, Lubrication, Tribology, Coaching their Operators on Basic Equipment Condition, Oil Contamination Control, Spare Parts Management, Maintenance Cost Reduction Team, just to name a few.
5 We all learn from the failure itself.
For every failure that occurred and that had been thoroughly analyzed through RCFA, there is a learning that we can all can gained from these experience in order to prevent the recurrence of the failure itself. Sometimes failures speak to us in a different language.
Root Cause Analysis in a Larger Context
The roots of RCA method can be traced to the broader field of total quality management or TQM. TQM has developed in different directions more or less simultaneously. One of these directions is the development of a number of problem analysis, problem‐solving, and improvement tools. Today, TQM possesses a large toolbox of such techniques. Further, problem‐solving is an integral part of continuous improvement. Thus, root cause analysis is one of the core building blocks in an organization’s continuous improvement efforts. However, it is important to keep in mind that root cause analysis must be made part of a larger problem‐solving effort that embraces a relentless pursuit of improvement at every level and in every department or business process of the organization.
Conclusion
Root cause analysis (RCA) is a systematic process for identifying the root causes of problems or events and an approach for responding to them. By properly carrying out RCA, problems are best solved and root causes are eliminated. However, prevention of problem recurrence by one corrective action may not always possible by merely addressing the immediate obvious symptoms. Many organizations tend to focus on single factor when trying to identify a cause, which leads to an incomplete resolution. Root cause analysis helps avoid this tendency and looks at the event as a whole. It is also important not to focus on the symptoms rather than the actual underlying problems contributing to the issue, leading to recurrence. The advantage of RCA is that it provides a structured method to identify the root cause of known problems thus ensuring a complete understanding of problems under review. By directing corrective measures at root causes, it is more probable that problem recurrence will be prevented.
3 Root Cause Analysis Process
The key to a good root cause analysis is truly understanding it. Root cause analysis (RCA) is an analysis process that helps you and your team find the root cause of an issue. RCA can be used to investigate and correct the root causes of repetitive incidents, major accidents, human errors, quality problems, equipment failures, production issues, manufacturing mistakes, and can even be used proactively to identify potential issues.
The key to successful root cause analysis is understanding a process or sequence that works. The effect is the event – what occurred. A cause is defined as a set of circumstances or conditions that allows or facilitates the existence of a condition an event. Therefore, the best strategy
