July 27, 2021 | Mark Paradies

#1 Cause of Equipment Failure

Six Articles Say Operator Error is the #1 Cause of Equipment Failure

I Googled “Equipment Failure” and clicked on the leading articles. Six of the leading articles said the #1 cause of equipment failure was operator error.

I don’t know where they get their stats, but I agree. When we teach the 2-Day Equifactor® Equipment Troubleshooting a & TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis Course, we find that a majority of equipment failure related incidents don’t end up under Equipment Difficulty on the Root Cause Tree®, they end up under Human Performance Difficulty.

Why Equipment Failures Keep Happening

If you approach each equipment failure as an equipment problem, you can see why the problems keep happening over and over again. If you don’t fix the human performance difficulties, the same problems will keep happening.

Have your equipment troubleshooters been trained to look for and identify the causes of human performance difficulties (human errors)? If the answer is “no, ” perhaps it is time to get them some Equifactor® Equipment Troubleshooting & TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis Training?

What’s in the Equifactor® Course?

Here is the 2-Day Equifactor® Course outline…

Course Outline

DAY ONE

Introductions
Understanding What Happened – SnapCharT^® Basics
SnapCharT^® Exercise
Collecting Information
Failure Modes and Failure Agents
Equifactor® Troubleshooting Tables
Human Errors
Process Troubleshooting
Example: Troubleshooting a Seawater Pump

DAY TWO

TapRooT®/Equifactor® Software Introduction
Identifying Causal Factors
Introduction to the Root Cause Tree®
Exercise: Walking Through the Root Cause Tree®
Exercise: Teams Find Root Causes Using the Root Cause Tree®
Change Analysis
Change Analysis Exercise
Final Exercise: Solving a Major Equipment Issue

The course materials include the book, Using Equifactor® Troubleshooting Tools and TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis to Improve Equipment Reliability, a TapRooT® Root Cause Tree®, the Root Cause Tree® Dictionary, and the Corrective Action Helper® Guide, a $129 value. The book includes a complete set of Heinz Bloch’s troubleshooting tables.

Upon completion of the course, attendees will receive a certificate of completion and a 90-day subscription to TapRooT® VI Software, our dynamic cloud-based software that computerizes the Equifactor® and TapRooT® Techniques.

Course Guarantee

Attend a 2-Day Equifactor® Course, go back to work, and use what you have learned to analyze equipment failures or operating issues. If you don’t find root causes that you previously would have overlooked and if you and your management don’t agree that the corrective actions that you recommend are much more effective, just return your course materials/software and we will refund the entire course fee.