7 Causes of Equipment Failure & How to Avoid Them

Despite their experience and knowledge, people still tend to make mistakes, forgetting important principles of training, due to fatigue or just laziness. Lack of understanding by the operator about how the equipment works and what is capable of damaging it leads to damage and unnecessary repairs.

The solution is strict adherence to the rules and training processes, but also strict rules about when one operator can replace another when working with a machine.

The experienced operator manages to identify potential risks in the machine, even if no SCADA or predictive maintenance system is implemented.

Knowing what the machine is telling us, as well as keeping a log of service and operation, forces operators not to ignore warning signals and provides a set of precautions and steps to take.

The introduction of a system for monitoring the condition of the machine is the most up-to-date solution available on the market.

Before it, or in parallel with it, it is extremely important to have a system that organizes the storage, transmission and reporting of this information. In the 21st century, this system must be a digital, or Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS). Fabrico combines a full CMMS, with work orders, preventive maintenance, spare parts inventory and QR codes, with real-time OEE monitoring in one platform.

This is a serious and expensive problem that happens not only to inexperienced operators. This often includes postponing the necessary and recommended maintenance periods, which leads to equipment damage.

Finding the right balance between work and maintenance is the solution here.

Accordingly, it is necessary to establish regular meetings and a planning system between the production manager and the technical manager.

The most serious problem that causes damage to equipment is gaps in maintenance and servicing. This is also the easiest problem to prevent.

Using a Fabrico-like system that ensures accountability from all operators and technicians can quickly and easily mitigate much of the risk

Preventive maintenance can identify small problems with low-cost solutions before they become large, costly faults.

When you use effective inventory control strategies to make sure you have the right spare parts for the most common maintenance and malfunction tasks, downtime for routine maintenance and repairs is minimal.

According to an analysis by the US Department of Energy, preventive maintenance saves an estimated 12% to 18% over purely reactive maintenance, and a functional predictive maintenance program is associated with:

• 25% to 30% reduction in maintenance costs
• 35% to 45% reduction in downtime
• 70% to 75% fewer breakdowns

Replacing parts is expensive, but damage to a major component can lead to a domino effect and necessitate the replacement of other parts that still have a service life.

Inspection is the key to preventing major component damage and long equipment life.

Regular inspection of the network and its connection to electrical devices is a responsible task, not coincidentally, usually the chief power engineer in a plant enjoys great respect.
 

Everyone has been there: the great pressure from management means that there is not a single second to save if you hope to achieve your production goals.

In these circumstances, it can be so tempting (and so easy) for an operator or maintenance worker to notice that something is not working 100%, to say, "We'll check this out later when things calm down".

But things never calm down, or if they accidentally calm down and do not keep a proper history of the identified potential problems, such as being written down on paper or mentioned in passing by one of the technicians, they become big problems.

Changing culture is a long process, but the fastest way to create a culture of accountability and discipline is to introduce CMMS.

Preventing failures component by component

Most component failures come from a short list of root conditions, and each has a routine that prevents it.

• Rolling bearings fail from poor lubrication, contamination and misalignment, so keep a lubrication route and align couplings after every motor change.
• Hydraulic pumps and valves fail from dirty oil, so set an ISO 4406 cleanliness target and sample against it.
• Belts and chains fail from wrong tension and worn sprockets, so check tension on a fixed interval.
• Motors fail from heat and insulation breakdown, so keep cooling paths clean and trend insulation resistance once a year.

Each routine becomes a preventive task with a fixed interval and a named owner. Our guide to bearing failure modes goes deeper on the most common one.

Catching electrical faults early

Electrical faults rarely start as a sudden short. They start as a loose termination that heats, or a winding whose insulation slowly degrades. Three checks catch most of them: an infrared scan of panels and motor terminal boxes while under load, looking for one connection hotter than its neighbors; an insulation resistance test on critical motors, trended year on year; and a check of the voltage balance between phases, because a small voltage unbalance causes a much larger current unbalance and extra winding heat. All of this work is done by qualified electricians under lockout, except the infrared scan, which is done live from a safe distance with the correct PPE.

Turning operator training into a daily routine

Training works best when it ends in a daily routine the operator owns. A five minute clean, inspect, lubricate and tighten round at the start of each shift, with a short checklist per machine, turns "the operator should notice" into "the operator checked and signed". Abnormalities found on the round go straight into the maintenance backlog instead of being mentioned in passing.