Introducing ReflexRCA

Many companies live with ongoing issues with equipment performance, work quality inconsistency and inefficient work practices. This means accepting lower performance than they could achieve, and higher costs than they should spend.

When they try to do something about it they often charge off down some software illuminated path and end up with efforts that are badly focused, produce sub standard results, and take forever to implement. 

ReflexRCA^TM was specifically built to make problems solving a reflex, not a special event. 

We have worked to develop this method over several decades to make sure it deals with the common flaws in root cause analysis programs. 

ReflexRCA - Causal Analysis

Next week I will be facilitating an RCA exercise in a coal mine on the east coast of Australia. I have always particularly enjoyed facilitation, as I get to help others get to make improvements pretty quickly. 

In this case we will be looking at a Sporadic failure in the electrical field, although it appears to have happened more than once. 

Should be interesting... 

Last time I wrote about Reflex RCA we spoke in a little bit of detail about failure identification. In particular about chronic and sporadic failure types, and using common measures and technologies to determine which chronic failures to spend time and energy on. 

This post I want to start working through some of the issues related to causal analysis.

Changing the way we measure maintenance - Mobile Assets

Recently we spoke about how our current approach to KPI's and performance reporting leaves a lot to be desired. In particular the fact that we still represent performance as one point in time (one figure), we often misuse the metrics we do have, and we do not take advantage of advances in technology. 

Although there were a range of suggested metrics included in this post, I wanted to post some actual (Anonymous) data to try to show how powerful it is to use modern technologies for asset improvement. 

The graph presented in this post is called a Motion Graph and it is developed using Google Drive. 

Failure reduction - Targeting Analysis

I became disillusioned with Root Cause Analysis many years ago when I first bumped into Mr Bob latino from the Reliability Centre in Virginia. (Real class character and all round nice guy)

Since then I have worked a lot in this area and my continued work has sharpened my appreciation of the problems in this field.

Initiatives end up being long lists of redesigns waiting for capital/approval/time/labour and all the while the problem persists. Or we dedicate so much of our time working on things that are going to take weeks to analyse correctly. Or worse still, we end up blaming the fallible human and sending them off for unneeded retraining.

This post is the first in a series of posts on ReflexRCA. A method of to embed root cause analysis across the organization using straightforward principles and methods, and based on tools you probably have at your disposal today. 

The series will include:

• Targeting Analysis
• Causal Analysis (Depth of analysis)
• Fixing failure (Resolving problems)
• Case Studies (From a range of different industries)

We won't be talking here about issues such as implementation or justification of these programs. I am pretty sure that most companies see this as self evident.