Root Cause Failure Analysis (RCFA) Masterclass

Why Attend

This course provides participants with an in-depth and practical understanding of how to investigate and prevent equipment failure.

Failure analysis has historically been viewed as the domain of technical specialists, using complicated tools and programs to inform maintenance and operating teams what they have done incorrectly. 

This course demystifies failure analysis and places it in the hands of the maintenance and operating organizations in order to enable greater asset reliability.

The course explores models such as Root Cause Failure Analysis (RCFA) and Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA); it demonstrates how these can be broken down into simple steps that can engage the whole organization, from the operating team to the technical specialists.

The course also covers effective failure control and how to learn from the failure investigation or failure prevention analysis to not just identify the problem, but to implement effective robust controls as well in order to prevent future similar failures across an organization’s assets.

As well as best-in-class visuals and slides, this course includes a high level of interaction between the facilitator and participants to ensure the course is meeting their specific requirements. 

Numerous relevant case studies are utilized to demonstrate key points and a series of exercises are conducted to apply learning and to appreciate key aspects of best practice.

Course Methodology

This is an interactive course. There are open question and answer sessions, regular group exercises, videos, case studies and presentations on best practice and the fundamentals of reliability improvement. 

Participants have the option and opportunity to share and discuss their own work experience and to identify issues and enhancements that can be immediately tackled/applied upon returning to their organizations. 

Course Objectives

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Understand equipment function and therefore skillfully identify equipment failure
• Effectively investigate equipment failure incidents to understand root causes
• Implement effective controls to avoid similar incidents occurring
• Engage their organization to achieve more effective failure investigation
• Analyze critical equipment systems to avoid future failure

Target Audience

This course is ideal for maintenance managers, operations managers and reliability professionals. Maintenance engineers, experienced supervisors, planners and functional specialists will also benefit greatly from this course.

Target Competencies

• Failure investigation
• Failure control implementation
• Root cause analysis and 5Y
• Failure mode identification
• Reliability engineering

Purpose of Failure Investigation, Prevention and Control

• Understanding the needs of the business
• How equipment failures effect profit and customer satisfaction
• Risk assessment and prioritization
• Introduction to the Integrated Model of Excellence for Maintenance

Understanding Function and Failure Modes

• Understanding equipment function
• The history of failure mode modelling and where people go wrong
• Introduction to failure types

Principles of Failure Investigation

• What is Root Cause Failure Analysis (RCFA)
• Gathering data, how to understand what has really happened
• Investigating further with Barrier Analysis and Change Identification
• Getting to root cause with 5 why’s
• Organising your investigation with Cause Types and Fault Trees
• The importance of facts and data based analysis

Principles of Failure Prediction

• What Failure Modes Effects Analysis (FMEA) is
• Understanding when it is appropriate to undertake FMEA
• Pitfalls for FMEA and how to avoid these
• FMEA as part of an integrated Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM) process

Implementing Failure Prevention Controls

• Types of controls
• How to choose the appropriate control
• Making controls stick

Practical implementation methods

• Organizing your business to effectively learn from failure
• Who needs to be engaged in achieving the change?
• The importance of communication
• Implementing Continuous Improvement in your failure learning process