The Myth of “Maintenance-Induced” Failures

Much has been said about “maintenance-induced” failures in the media lately.  However, just what is a maintenance-induced failure?  It has been explained that this type of failure occurs when a maintenance technician is doing an intrusive inspection or service on a piece of equipment and induces or causes a failure.  This is due to the maintenance technician putting the piece of equipment back together incorrectly and it fails shortly after being put back in service.

So let’s stop and consider this scenario.  If take my automobile into the repair shop and have the brakes checked, the auto technician does a partial disassembly of the car to see the brakes properly and determine their actual condition.  Do I worry about a “auto-technician” induced failure to my brakes?  Likely not.  If I take my watch to a jewelry store to be cleaned (yes, not all of us have digital watches), do I worry about a “jewelry technician” induced failure with my watch?

Those are simple examples, so let’s use some additional complicated ones.  Have you ever had a transmission fail in your automobile?  Did you replace it with a new transmission or a rebuilt one?   For most of us, the answer will be “a rebuilt one”. Why?  Because the new one is much more expensive!  Did we worry about a “transmission technician” induced failure? 

Likewise, did anyone ever have an automobile engine fail?  Did you have it rebuilt? Did you buy a different rebuilt engine?  Did you buy a new engine?  Again, the answer will probably be the rebuilt engine.  Why, because a new one will cost a lot more.  Did you worry about a “technician induced” failure in the rebuilt engine?  The answer is no.

Now in these scenarios (and many others) we trust the person who performed the “maintenance” on the inspected and rebuilt components.  Why don’t we do that in our plants or facilities?  Why do we allow equipment to run to failure or require very expensive technology to monitor when we could perform good manual inspections and services and achieve the same goal?  It is due to the fact that we do not trust the skills of our current technicians.

Why don’t we train our technicians to the level of proficiency so that we can send them out to do a preventive maintenance inspection and/or service on our equipment and be confident there will be no “Maintenance-Induced” failures? 

More next week…

Comments

[Jason Verly]

You just made quite a few Maint Mgr's and Maint Supv's gulp a little bit. Your statement on trust hit the spot.