reliability

What’s the FRACAS?

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Failure Elimination Made Simple

by Ricky Smith, CMRP, CMRT and Bill Keeter, CMRP

“Your system is perfectly designed to give you the results that you get.”
W. Edwards Deming PhD

H ow good is your organization at identifying failures? Of course you see failures when they occur, but
can you identify when recurring failures are creating serious equipment reliability issues? Most compa-
nies begin applying RCA or RCFA to “high value failures”. While this is not wrong, I prefer to either not
see the failure in the first place, or at the least, to reduce the failures to a controllable level.

Failure Reporting Analysis and Corrective Action System role in unreliability. Here are a few examples of those
(FRACAS) is an excellent process that can be used to con- losses:
trol or eliminate failures. This is a process in which you
identify any reports from your CMMS/EAM or a special- 1. Equipment Breakdown (total functional failure)
ized Reliability Software that can help you to eliminate, A. Causes of Equipment Breakdown
mitigate or control failures. These reports could include 1. No Repeatable Effective Repair, Preventive
cost variance, Mean Time Between Failure, Mean Time Be- Maintenance, Lubrication, or Predictive
tween Repair, dominant failure patterns in your operation, Maintenance Procedure
common threads between failures such as “lack of lubrica- 2. No one following effective procedures
tion” (perhaps due to lubricator not using known industry 2 Equipment not running to rate (partial
standards). One poll was conducted recently covering 80 functional failure)
large companies. Shockingly, none of these companies A. Causes of Equipment not Running to Rate
were capturing the data required to understand and con- 1. Operator not having an effective
trol equipment failures. procedure to follow
2. Operator not trained to operate or
Answer the following questions honestly before you go troubleshoot equipment
any further to see if you have any problems with identify- 3. Management thinking this is the best rate
ing failures and effectively eliminating or mitigating their at which the equipment can operate because
effects on total process and asset reliability. of age or condition
3. Off-Quality Product that is identified as “first pass
1. Can you identify the top 10 assets which had the quality” (could be a partial or total functional failure)
most losses due to a partial or total functional A. Causes of Quality Issues
failure by running a report on your maintenance 1. Acceptance by management that “first pass
software? quality” is not a loss because the product can
2. Can you identify the total losses in your organization be recycled
and separate them into process and asset losses for 4. Premature Equipment Breakdown
the past 365 days? A. Ineffective or no commissioning procedures. We
3. Can you identify components with a common thread are talking about maintenance replacement of
due to a specific failure pattern, such as the one parts or equipment and engineering/contractor
shown in Figure 1? that fails prematurely because no one has iden-
tified if a defect is present after the equipment
has been installed, repaired, serviced, etc. See
Figures 2 and 3.
(If you have ever seen equipment break down or not run-
ning to rate immediately after a shutdown, you know
what we are talking about.)
Figure 1 - Failure Pattern from Nowlan
and Heap Study
The Proactive Workflow Model – Eliminating unreliability
Many times, the cost of unreliability remains unknown be- is a continuous improvement process much like the Proac-
cause the causes of unreliability are so many. Whether tive Work Flow Model in Figure 4. The Proactive Work-
you want to point the finger at maintenance, production flow Model illustrates the steps required in order to move
(operations) or engineering, each functional area plays a from a reactive to a proactive maintenance program.

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 the FRACAS provides con-
tinuous improvement for
your maintenance strate-
gies. There are fundamen-
tal items you must have in
place to insure that you
receive the results you ex-
pect.
Figures 2 and 3 – Defects Identi ed
Think of FRACAS this way.
As you have failures, you
What the Proactive Work Flow Model really use your CMMS/EAMS failure codes to record
means to your organization – Implementing the part-defect-cause of each failure. Analyz-
the Proactive Work Flow Model is the key to ing part-defect-cause on critical assets helps
eliminating failures. The built-in continuous you begin to make serious improvement in Figure 5 – FRACAS Loop
improvement processes of Job Plan Improve- your operation’s reliability. Looking at the
ment and the Failure Reporting, Analysis, and FRACAS Model in Figure 5, we begin with ments of an effective FRACAS are an effective
Corrective Action System (FRACAS) help ensure Work Order History Analysis, and from this validated equipment hierarchy, criticality anal-
that maintainability and reliability are always analysis we decide whether we need to apply ysis, failure modes analysis, and equipment
improving. All of the steps and processes have Root Cause Analysis (RCA), Reliability Centered maintenance plans.
to be implemented in a well managed and Maintenance, or Failure Modes and Effect
controlled fashion to get full value out of the Analysis to eliminate or reduce the failures we FRACAS Checklist:
model. discover. From the RCA, we determine mainte-
nance strategy adjustments needed to predict Equipment Hierarchy should be built and vali-
The foundational elements of Asset Health As- or prevent failures. Even the most thorough dated so that similar failures on like equipment
surance are keys because they ensure that all of analysis doesn’t uncover every failure mode. can be identified across an organization.
the organization’s assets are covered by a com- Performance monitoring after we make the
plete and correct Equipment Maintenance Plan strategy adjustments may find that new failure Criticality Analysis is developed and validated
(EM). These are requirements (not options) to modes not covered by your strategy occur. You so that equipment criticality is ranked based
ensure that you have a sustainable proactive can now make a new failure code to track the on Production Throughput, Asset Utilization,
workflow model. new failure mode so additional failures can be Cost, Environment, and Safety.
tracked and managed when you review work
You cannot have continuous improvement Failure Modes Analysis is completed on all criti-
order history. You can see this is a continuous
until you have a repeatable, disciplined cal equipment using FMA, FMEA, or RCM.
improvement loop which never ends.
process. Equipment Maintenance Plans are developed
Steps to Implementing an Effective on all critical equipment to prevent or predict
The objective of the Proactive Work Flow Mod- FRACAS
el is to provide discipline and repeatability to a failure.
your maintenance process. The inclusion of Let’s back up a little. The foundational ele- Effective Equipment Hierarchy – Asset Catalog
or Equipment Hierarchy must be developed to
provide the data required to manage a proac-
tive maintenance program which includes fail-
ure reporting or FRACAS (Failure Reporting,
Analysis and Corrective Action System). In
order to eliminate failures, one needs to en-
sure this is a successful first step. Figure 6 (on
the following page) displays the findings from
a plant with 32 total “Part – Bearing” failures
from different size electric motors (“Part” is
identified from a CMMS/EAM Codes drop down
screen). One type “Defect – Wear” occurred
in 85% of the failures (“Defect” is identified
from a CMMS/EAM Codes drop down screen).
In 98% of the cases, “Cause” was found to be
”Inadequate Lubrication”. Now it is time to
Figure 1 - Risk Scorecard perform a Root Cause Failure Analysis on this
common thread of failures. (“Cause” as identi-
fied on CMMS/EAM Codes drop down screen).
Once the hierarchy is established you can find
similar failures in one area of an operation or
Figure 4 - ProActive Work Flow Model

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 The purpose of the Asset Criticality Analysis
is to identify which equipment has the most
serious potential consequences on business
performance, if it fails. Consequences on the
business can include:

• Production Throughput or Equipment /

+ + =
Facility Utilization
• Cost due to lost or reduced output
• Environmental Issues
• Safety Issues
• Other
The resulting Equipment Criticality Number is
used to prioritize resources performing main-
tenance work. The Intercept Ranking Model
Figure 6 – Reason for Equipment Hierarchy Validated illustrates this process (Figure 7). On the “Y”
axis you see the asset criticality is listed from
across the total operation. Validation of the After a thorough analysis you will find that most none to high. I like using a scale of 0-1000
equipment hierarchy is required against the or- failures come from a small amount of equip- because all assets are not necessarily equal.
ganization’s established equipment hierarchy ment. The question is, “Which equipment?”. Using the Intercept line which is struck down
standard. We are looking for “Part” – “Defect” the middle, a planner or scheduler can define
– “Cause”. Maintenance personnel may not Asset Criticality Analysis – Everyone says they which job should be planned or scheduled first,
have the training or ability to determine the have identified their critical equipment. But, in or at least get close to the best answer, because
“Defect” (Predictive Maintenance Technician many cases, equipment criticality could change management has already been involved in de-
could identify Defect) and “Cause” can be typi- based on how upset people are about an equip- termining the most critical asset and the equip-
cally identified by a maintenance technician, ment problem or because people are confused ment has told you (on the “X” axis) which one
maintenance engineer, reliability engineer, or about what consequences associate to failure has the highest defect severity (in the worst
predictive maintenance technician. and the probability it will occur if we manage condition).
equipment reliability effectively.

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 cept of part-defect-cause, and go through the
basic equipment types in your facility such as
centrifugal pumps, piston pumps, gearboxes,
motors, etc.. You will find that a relatively
small number of failure codes will cover a lot
of failure modes in your facility. The failure
modes developed during this exercise can later
become the basis for the failure modes, effects,
and criticality analysis that takes place during
Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM) proj-
ects. In our book, we focus on failure mode
identification as an output of FRACAS (Failure
Reporting, Analysis and Corrective Action Sys-
tem), which, again, is a strong continuous im-
provement process.

If, over a period of one year, the dominant

failure mode is “wear” for bearings caused by
Inadequate Lubrication then one can change or
develop a standard, provide training and thus
eliminate a large amount of failures.
Figure 7 – Intercept Model The problem is that most companies do not
The only other two factors I would add in de- In addition, many program tasks are designed have the data to identify a major problem on
termining which job to plan or schedule would to maintain regulatory compliance. Many com- multiple assets (No data in equals no effective
be based on work order type (PM, CM, CBM, panies have PM programs. However, many of failure reports out). For example, it isn’t the
Rebuild, etc) plus time on back. Figure 8 shows the tasks in them do not address specific fail- motor that fails; the motor fails because of a
the 4-Way Prioritization Model for planning ure modes. specific part’s failure mode, which then results
and scheduling. in catastrophic damage to the motor. Unless,
For example: An electric motor with roller of course, the defect is identified early enough
Identify what equipment is most likely to nega- bearings has specific failure modes which can in the failure mode.
tively impact business performance because it be prevented with lubrication. The failure
both matters a lot when it fails and it fails too mode is “wear” caused by “Inadequate Lubri- Maintenance Strategy – The maintenance strat-
often. The resulting Relative Risk Number is cation”. The next question may be why you egy should be a result from either a Failure
used to identify assets that are candidates for had Inadequate Lubrication. The Inadequate Modes and Effect Analysis, Reliability Centered
reliability improvement. Lubrication could be identified as a result of Maintenance or from failure data collected
no lubrication standard being established for from your CMMS/EAM.
A consistent definition for equipment critical- bearings. In other words someone gives the Elimination Strategy: The best way to
ity needs to be adopted and validated in order bearing “x” shots of grease even though no one eradicate this deadly waste is get a better
to ensure the right work is completed at the knows the exact amount to prevent the bear- understanding of the true nature of the
right time. This is the key to the elimination ing from failure. equipment’s failure patterns and adjust the
of failures. Maintenance Strategy to match.
The best way to identify failure modes is to use - Andy Page CMRP
Identification of Failure Modes – The goal of a facilitated process. Put together a small team
most maintenance strategies is to prevent or consisting of people knowledgeable about the So what is a maintenance strategy? Let’s break
predict equipment failures. Equipment failures equipment, train them thoroughly on the con- down the two words: Maintenance is to keep
are typically caused by the catastrophic failure
of an individual part. These parts develop de-
fects, and when left alone, those defects lead
to the ultimate catastrophic failure of the part.
The defects are, in turn, caused by “something”.
Eliminating that “something” (the cause) will
eliminate the failure.

The primary goal of an effective Preventive (PM)

program is to eliminate the cause and prevent
the failure from occurring. The primary goal
of a Predictive Maintenance (PdM) or Condition
Based Monitoring (CBM) Program is to detect
the defects and manage the potential failures
before they become catastrophic failures. Figure 8 – “4 Way Prioritization Model”

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 pect about Asset Health. Once this change is
underway, Asset Health, as a metric, becomes
what most maintenance managers and plant
managers have wanted for a long time — a
leading indicator of maintenance costs and
business risk.

2. Mean Time Between Failures and Mean Time

Between Repairs – reported by maintenance
or reliability engineers on a monthly basis on
the top 5-20% of critical equipment. The report
to management should include recommenda-
Figure 9 – Percent of Assets with No Identi able Defect tions to improve both metrics and should be
measured and posted on a line graph for all to
in an existing condition, or to keep, preserve, Strategy, Maintenance Planning consisting of see.
protect, while Strategy is development of a repeatable procedures, work scheduled based
prescriptive plan toward a specific goal. on equipment criticality, work executed using 3. Cost Variance by area of the plant – report-
precision techniques, proper commissioning of ed by maintenance and production supervisor
So, a Maintenance Strategy is a prescriptive equipment when a new part or equipment is area of responsibility. Cost variance must be
plan to keep, preserve, or protect an asset or installed, and quality control using Predictive reported to maintenance and production man-
assets. Keep in mind that one specific type of Maintenance Technologies to ensure no de- agement on a monthly basis. The report should
maintenance strategy is “run to failure” (RTF). fects are present after this event occurs. The not be acceptable without a known cause of
However, RTF is used only if, based on thor- very last part of your maintenance strategy is the variance and a plan to bring it in compli-
ough analysis, it is identified as the best solu- FRACAS, because it drives the continuous im- ance.
tion for specific equipment to optimize reliabil- provement portion of this strategy.
ity at optimal cost. Less invasive maintenance 4. Most Frequent Part-Defect-Cause Report –
is preferred to more invasive maintenance. Failure Reporting reported monthly by maintenance or reliability
This is one of the fundamental concepts of any engineers. If you do not have maintenance or
well-defined maintenance strategy. Specific Failure reporting can come in many forms. reliability engineers, you may need to appoint
maintenance strategies are designed to miti- The key is to have a disciplined plan to review a couple of your best maintenance technicians
gate the consequences of each failure mode. failure reports over a specific time period, and as “Reliability Engineering” Technicians, even if
As a result, maintenance is viewed as a reliabil- then to develop actions to eliminate failure. unofficially, and train them to be a key player
ity function instead of a repair function. Saying Following are a few Failure Report examples, in this failure elimination process. This one re-
this means Predictive Maintenance or Condi- which should be included as part of your FRA- port can identify common failure threads with-
tion Monitoring is the best solution because it CAS Continuous Improvement and Defect Elim- in your operation which, when resolved, can
is mainly noninvasive. ination Process. make a quick impact to failure elimination.

Knowing that both systemic problems and op- 1. Asset Health or Percent of Assets with No There are many more reports that can be used
erating envelope problems produce the same Identifiable Defect – reported by maintenance effectively, but will not fit in the space of this
type of defects, a maintenance strategy that management to plant and production manage- article. You will be able to find more reports
merely attempts to discover the defects and ment on a monthly basis at least (see Figure 9). in the book on “FRACAS” written by Ricky and
correct them will never be able to reach a pro- An asset that has an identifiable defect is said Bill, which will be published by mid July.
active state. Technicians will be too busy fixing to be in a condition RED. An asset that does
the symptoms of problems instead of address- not have an identifiable defect is said to be in Bill Keeter is currently a Senior Techni-
ing the root cause. To reach a truly proactive condition GREEN. That is it. It is that simple. cal Advisor for Allied Reliability. Bill joined
state, the root cause of the defects will need There are no other “but ifs”, “what ifs” or “if Allied in 2006 after serving as President
to be identified and eliminated. Maintenance then”. If there is an identifiable defect the asset of BK Reliability Engineers, Inc. where he
strategies that accomplish this are able to is in condition RED. If there is no identifiable provided training and facilitation services
achieve a step change in performance and defect, it is GREEN. The percentage of ma- to help facilities improve asset performance
achieve incredible cost savings. Maintenance chines that are in condition GREEN is the Asset using Weibull Analysis, Reliability Centered
strategies that do not attempt to address the Health (as a percentage) for that plant or area. Maintenance, Availability Simulation, and Life
root cause of defects will continue to see lack- Cycle Cost Analysis. Bill has over 30 years of
luster results and struggle with financial per- The definition for defect is: an abnormality in a experience in Maintenance Engineering and
formance. part which leads to equipment or asset failure Management. He has successfully imple-
if not corrected in time. mented maintenance improvement programs
A Maintenance Strategy involves all elements in a variety of manufacturing and production
that aim the prescriptive plan toward a com- Example: the plant has 1,000 pieces of equip- facilities. Bill’s experience includes mainte-
mon goal. Key parts of a maintenance strategy ment. Of that number, 750 of them have no nance leadership positions in the US Military,
include Preventive and Predictive Maintenance identifiable defects. The plant is said to have the nuclear industry, chemicals, paper con-
based on a solid Failure Mode Elimination 75% Asset Health. There is an interesting as- verting, and plastic film manufacturing. He

48
has provided training and reliability consult-
ing services to petroleum, process, mining,
and defense industries in the United States,
Mid-East, and Europe. Bill has developed
competency maps for Reliability, Availabil-
ity, and Maintainability Engineering for the
Petroleum Industry’s PetroSkills® program.

Bill has published articles in a variety of

internationally recognized maintenance pub-
lications, and has presented papers on the
practical application of Weibull Analysis at
several internationally attended Maintenance
and Reliability Conferences. Bill is a Certified
Maintenance and Reliability Professional with
the Society for Maintenance and Reliability
Professionals Certifying Organization. You
can contact Bill at [email protected]

Ricky Smith is currently

Ricky has over 30 years
experience in maintenance as a maintenance
manager, maintenance super-visor,
maintenance engineer, maintenance training
specialist, maintenance consultant and is a
well known published author. Ricky has
worked with maintenance organizations in
hundreds of facilities, industrial plants, etc,
world wide in developing reliability, main-
tenance and technical training strategies.
Prior to joining
Ricky worked as a professional maintenance
employee for Exxon Company USA, Alumax
(this plant was rated the best in the world for
over 18 years), Kendall Company, and Hercu-
les Chemical providing the foundation for his
reliability and maintenance experience.

Ricky is the co-author of “Rules of Thumb for

Maintenance and Reliability Engineers”,
“Lean Maintenance” and “Industrial Repair,
Best Maintenance Repair Practices”. Ricky
has also written for several magazines during
the past 20 years on technical, reliability and
maintenance subjects. Ricky holds certifica-
tion as Certified Maintenance and Reliability
Professional from the Society for Mainte-
nance and Reliability Professionals as well as
a Certified Plant Maintenance Manager from
the Association of Facilities Engineering
Ricky lives in SC with his wife.
Ricky enjoys kayaking, fishing, hiking and
archaeology.

If you would like to be notified before the

release of the new book, or would like to
contact Ricky with questions, send him an
email at