I’m a potential failure! I am the result of improper equipment design, procurement, installation, maintenance, and operation. I exist under extreme conditions for which I was never designed. I haven’t hidden or been silent, but most have ignored me and all have allowed me to grow. I’ll become a risk of severe damage and injury.

One day I will reach my full potential and show everyone what a failure I have become. At that moment, everyone will wish I had been given the early attention and mitigation I deserved.

Don’t feel sorry for me, because I am not alone, and will most likely return. I have created many other potential failures like myself. Some of those failures will cause even more harm and damage. Most likely, I will be reborn on the same equipment again and again due to improper maintenance practices.

If this does not concern you, then do nothing and let me show you what an equipment failure can really cost you when you least expect it and didn’t prepare for it. If you don’t like having me around, then what can you do? Here are some activities your maintenance and engineering departments can perform to prevent me from happening and ensure your equipment is operational upon demand, meaning reliable:

1. Design for reliability
2. Design for maintainability
3. Design for operability
4. Manage maintenance backlog
5. Plan work, then schedule it and finally ensure it is properly executed
6. Focus on PdM activities like vibration monitoring, IR thermography, lubrication analysis, and many more as a routine exercise
7. Ensure precision maintenance is routinely done
8. Perform operator checks
9. Maintain properly written and continually optimized preventative maintenance activities that return value
10. Provide training for operators, mechanics, and engineers to help ensure precision maintenance, proper operation, and reliable design
11. Perform root cause analysis
12. Ensure failure modes and effects analysis is a routine part of your maintenance and reliability efforts
13. Ensure that you have identified all critical assets
14. Ensure you have mitigation plans in place to deal with critical equipment failures
15. Ensure that critical spare parts are available, properly stored, and easily accessible when needed

Visit our Knowledge Center for resources and tools to help you succeed when implementing and using our maintenance technologies! Watch our video tutorials, download infographics, plus explore other helpful information to reduce equipment failures and downtime.