Reliability programs often suffer from “Catastrophe Bias.” We spin up an intensive RCA for the big turbine failure, but we ignore the pump that trips once a week or the sensor that needs a “quick reset” every shift.
Because these events are small, they don’t trigger a formal investigation. However, when you aggregate the labor, parts, and lost uptime, these chronic issues often cost significantly more than the rare, sporadic catastrophes.
Getting to the Root Cause
The real issue is an investigation threshold based on severity rather than frequency.
Most RCA triggers are purely reactive—based on a specific dollar amount or a safety incident. This ignores the Cumulative Cost of Unreliability.
If a $5,000 failure happens 30 times a year, it’s a $150,000 problem, yet it rarely receives the same intellectual rigor as a one-time $100,000 event.
Corrective Action (You Can Do This Week)
Run a “Top 5” Frequency Report. Don’t look at the most expensive failures from last month; look at the most frequent.
- Identify the Repeaters: Find the top 5 assets that required “unplanned adjustment” most often over the last 90 days.
- Calculate the Aggregate: Multiply the total man-hours spent on those 5 items by your labor rate.
- Initiate a “Mini-RCA”: Pick the #1 repeat offender and ask the shop floor team: “What would it take to make sure we don’t touch this asset again for six months?”
BONUS – Case Study: The Power of the Frontline
You don’t need a massive reliability team to catch these small leaks—you need to empower the people closest to the equipment. ADM did exactly this by putting EasyRCA directly into the hands of their frontline technicians.
By allowing technicians to launch RCAs on the “small” things that usually fly under the radar, they were able to scale their efforts across the organization.
The result? 700+ RCAs rolled together to deliver a staggering $70M in cost savings. When you democratize RCA, you stop managing failures and start eliminating them.
Help If You Need It
If your team is buried in “firefighting” and can’t find the time to tackle chronic failures, let’s talk.
We can help you implement EasyRCA to spot these trends automatically or provide RCA Training focused on high-frequency troubleshooting. Let’s stop the bleeding together.
Leave a Reply