Proactively Improving Equipment Performance

What is Proactive Improvement?

Proactively improving equipment performance is taking action before a failure occurs to prevent future failures.

You can probably think of several ways that you might approach proactive equipment performance improvement but this article is about a systematic way to discover possible ways you might proactively improve your equipment’s performance.

The Tool to Use

The tool to use to get ideas to improve equipment reliability proactively is called Equifactor®. The Equifactor® Tool is normally used reactively to find the causes of equipment failures. However, the same tool can be used proactively to develop reliability improvement ideas.

What is Equifactor®?

Equifactor® is a set of troubleshooting tools that help you systematically troubleshoot equipment failures. It was developed with Heinz Bloch and his set of equipment troubleshooting tables derived from his experience in the oil and chemical process industry.

Here is a 17-minute video that explains the Equifactor® Troubleshooting Process…

Here is the troubleshooting joke that I mentioned in the video…

This joke may be too true at some facilities. We suggest using a different process – the Equifactor® Process – for more reliable results. Here’s a diagram of that process…

Note that we start by drawing a SnapCharT® Diagram of what happened to help us troubleshoot the failure.

In this example, we are looking at a pump that was rebuilt but failed to pump rated capacity.

Here are the Equifactor® Troubleshooting Tables…

We would choose to open the centrifugal pump table and then look at the symptoms…

In this case, we look at the insufficient capacity symptom…

In this example, we continue to follow the guidance in the table by eliminating causes and finally working our way down to the cause that the impellor was installed backward. We can then add that information to our SnapCharT® Diagram…

We are now ready to identify the Causal Factors and find their root causes using the TapRooT® Root Cause Tree® Diagram (which I won’t dive into any deeper in this example).

When you have developed and implemented effective fixes to prevent future similar problems, you have used the TapRooT® System and Equifactor® Troubleshooting to reactively improve equipment performance.

But what if you wanted to proactively improve performance? What might you do?

Using Equifactor® Troubleshooting Tables to Proactively Improve Equipment Performance

Let’s see how we might have used the Equifactor® Troubleshooting Tables to proactively prevent the problem in the example above.

In this case, the supervisor, mechanic, or equipment reliability engineer might refer to the Equifactor® Troubleshooting Tables before the pump is sent to be rebuilt. They could review the centrifugal pump failure symptoms and see if any symptom might be triggered by the work to be performed.

One of the items that the person may review is the causes for insufficient capacity (as that was one of the reasons for rebuilding the pump). The person could see all the things that might be important in the pump rebuild including:

• Cleaning the strainer while the pump is out.
• Ensuring a proper valve lineup for the post-rebuild test.
• Checking the wear rings to ensure proper clearance.
• Checking the impeller is installed properly (since a double volute impeller can be installed backward).
• Checking that the impellor isn’t loose.
• Making sure that all air is vented from the pump and lines before the test.
• Checking that the pump is wired properly and rotates in the correct direction.
• Checking the pump’s rotating speed.

These checks could prevent many possible failures and, thus, proactively improve the pump’s reliability and reduce potential downtime caused by mistakes in the pump rebuild or the subsequent test.

Only One Example

This is just one example of many potential ways that Equifactor® Troubleshooting could be used to proactively improve equipment reliability. There are many others, including:

• Ideas for purchasing or upgrading equipment.
• Developing operator rounds to check for problems.
• Developing preventative maintenance actions and schedules.
• Adopting technology to proactively spot developing issues.

Learn More About Equifactor® Troubleshooting

To learn more about using Equifactor® Troubleshooting either reactively or proactively, attend one of our Equifactor® Troubleshooting and TapRoot® Root Cause Analysis Courses. See the upcoming public course schedule HERE.

To get even more ideas to improve equipment reliability and maintenance performance, consider attending the Maintenance and Reliability Best Practices Track at the 2025 Global TapRooT® Summit in Knoxville Tennessee, on October 1-3.

You can register for BOTH the Equifactor® Course (September 29-30) and the Summit (October 1-3) by CLICKING HERE.