2023 Schedule

Most failures in asset-intensive industries are very specific to the operating context. An effective root cause and failure analysis (RCFA) process cannot be based on templates of cause categories and it must be able to adapt to the specifics of the industry and events. The most important goal of an RCFA process is not to identify the cause, but to prevent the recurrence of the consequence. Simply identifying the cause is less than half of the goal, which is to prevent a recurrence. Although some RCFA processes can adequately identify the causes of the failure, none or almost none have the ability to formally identify the potential cause, and almost none have a process to defensibly identify the actions to address the causes. This presentation establishes new paradigms for the management of failures and will introduce the following: a simple, yet elegant RCFA process that can address and resolve all causes of failures of equipment, work processes, and management systems; an RCFA process that will identify actual and potential causes with the goal of preventing a reoccurrence of the consequence due to actual and potential causes; and an RCFA process that has a clear and defensible decision process to determine the solutions to prevent the consequence of the failures. We will also review the following: all categories of causes of failures and their solutions; reliability centred maintenance principles on which the process is based; the step-by-step process of how to analyze any equipment, work process, or management systems failure; and case studies showing how this process is defensible and enables companies to display due diligence in the prevention of failures and their consequences.