All Your Failures Could Be Caused by Maintenance
podcast episode with speaker Chris Jackson
Stating that it is possible (or even more extraordinarily … probable) that all your failures could be caused by maintenance, as opposed to being remedied by maintenance. Most engineers cannot bring themselves to believe this … even when the statistics prove it. This is not a new claim. The fact that maintenance, as a bare minimum, temporarily increases failure rates was identified by British biologist C.H. Waddington during World War II, when he found that failure rates in aircraft in Bomber Command decreased after maintenance. From a statistical perspective, this is a clear ‘fingerprint’ of failures that are entirely dependent on maintenance. The longer the time since an aircraft was last serviced, the more reliable it was – until it was re-serviced, when the failure rate went through the roof. The same things happen today, and the statistics don’t lie. This (from one perspective) is great news, as all you need to do to improve the reliability of your assets is to do less maintenance. This is also (from another perspective) terrible news, as it shows how strong the psychology of so-called objective engineers can be when it comes to maintenance. If you think your assets are being serviced too often … check out this webinar to be convinced (or otherwise)!
This Accendo Reliability webinar was originally broadcast on 13 June 2026.
To view the recorded video/audio and PDF workbook of the event, visit the webinar page.
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