Despite the host of processes and strategies that manufacturers enact to reduce and avoid equipment failure, these scenarios remain an unfortunate reality of manufacturing operations. A failure reporting analysis and corrective action system — known as a FRACAS — can help organizations to extract value from failure scenarios, analyze why they occur and take further action toward reducing and avoiding them.
Modern manufacturing environments are incredibly complex and understanding how and why failures occur calls for a systematic approach. For example, recurring equipment failures may not be a simple hardware problem. The issue may result from software being improperly calibrated, which leads to certain components being stressed beyond their specified capacities. Without a standardized system for discovering, documenting and dealing with failures, it’s highly likely that such problems will continue within a facility.
What is FRACAS?
A FRACAS system includes a number of standard components, making up a closed-loop feedback, analysis and action cycle that leads to process improvements and efficiencies over time. In this section, we will explore each part of FRACAS: failure reporting analysis and corrective action system.
- Failure Reporting: Under a FRACAS system, any failure condition that occurs throughout the facility, whether part of a process, machine, component or system, must be reported in a standardized way. In order to provide value and be useful, the failure report should include several details: the date and time of the failure, the specifics of the component or process that failed, the symptoms of the failure itself, the test results that identified the failure and the scenario under which the failure occurred (including personnel, location, equipment details, process details and more).
- Analysis: With the details of the failure report readily available, analysis of the failure is the next step — specifically, root cause failure analysis. Root cause analysis is one of the most effective methods to diagnose, remedy and ultimately reduce the incidence of equipment failures because it takes the time to posit more than just what occurred (and how to remedy it), but to examine why it occurred (and how processes may be modified to prevent it from happening again). Root cause analysis takes into account equipment history, performance data, personnel information, process analysis and more.
- Corrective Action: Once root cause analysis has been satisfactorily completed, corrective action can be taken. This may incorporate process changes, retraining, preventive maintenance adjustments and more. The key intended outcome of corrective action is reduction or prevention of failure events in the future, based on the data and information provided by the report and analysis. In order to complete the final step of the closed-loop feedback process — a core component of a FRACAS — the corrective action must be documented, followed and tracked to measure its efficacy. If not effective, the steps taken should be adjusted or further monitored to pursue value and benefits.
Many industries with high reliability requirements trust FRACAS to guide their maintenance and continuous improvement activities. These include the aerospace, defense and manufacturing sectors. They value what FRACAS brings to their organizations because it offers a comprehensive and holistic approach to resolving common failure scenarios. For example, a manufacturing line may begin breaking down frequently, which is traced back to a single component wearing out faster than expected. Technicians would conduct a thorough root cause analysis and discover that the equipment wasn’t properly calibrated, then follow up the discovery with corrective action that solves the underlying issue. The fact that all steps are comprehensively documented means that if the problem resurfaces, workers will know not to take the same approach as before.
Implementation of FRACAS
Proper implementation of a FRACAS process is key to achieving the best results from such a system. This should begin with the establishment of a cross-functional FRACAS team tasked with establishing the failure reporting protocols and developing root cause analysis procedures. Care must be taken to ensure all these elements are standardized, which can be achieved easily through the use of software tools such as a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS). From there, the implementation can be performed through various phases:
- Discovery Phase: The discovery phase should draw from the intended outcomes or objectives of the FRACAS implementation. With a strong understanding of those goals, discovery should include:
- Existing process analysis
- Audit of equipment, personnel and procedures
- Identification of asset failure modes
- Analysis of existing historical failure data
- And more — With this analysis in hand, discovery should also include identification of failure analysis and corrective action tasks, ownership of those tasks, approval chains and other decision-making steps.
- Design Phase: With an understanding of the existing scenario and the intended outcomes, it is now time to design the FRACAS process. This stage includes identification, standardization and documentation of required tasks, as well as who is responsible for them. FRACAS software is almost always used to facilitate this step (as well as subsequent steps in system implementation), helping to keep track of the extensive web of tasks, responsibilities, reports and data. At the very least, the design stage should enumerate the required tasks, who is responsible for them and how the tasks and results will be documented.
- Enactment Phase: The enactment phase incorporates the actual implementation of the FRACAS. This phase can include software implementation, onboarding, training and communication. The ongoing success of enactment, or implementation, is heavily reliant upon adherence to the processes established in the previous phases — thus, the importance of buy-in among relevant personnel cannot be overstated. Onboarding should include a clear communication of the value and benefits of the FRACAS, so that employees understand why they are being asked to learn new systems and take on new responsibilities.
- Continuous Improvement Phase: FRACAS is iterative and requires ongoing updates and refinement. The FRACAS maintenance team needs to be prepared to take a close look at practices and adjust them as needed.
Common obstacles and troubleshooting FRACAS
As with all new practices, implementing FRACAS can bring challenges that threaten to derail the entire process. For example, there may be difficulties regarding consistent reporting if the company still relies on manual data entry. Automated data capture can smooth out these concerns and help make for a friction-free process. Many organizations have difficulty with FRACAS because employees fail to understand their roles in the protocols, but this can be resolved with an emphasis on proper training. In other cases, upper management may not be fully committed to the idea. This calls for a concerted effort to get buy-in at all levels of the company. Overcoming obstacles such as these is crucial for ensuring a successful FRACAS adoption.
Integrating FRACAS with other maintenance programs
Chances are, an organization considering FRACAS already has an established maintenance program in place. Rather than superseding these protocols, FRACAS can be integrated into them to make them stronger. For instance, the data collected through FRACAS also can be fed into RCM, TPM or predictive maintenance models. The root cause analysis findings FRACAS generates also can help refine maintenance schedules and training programs, while IIoT systems within the facility can be used to help inform FRACAS as part of a larger reliability engineering ecosystem.
FRACAS compliance
FRACAS enables compliance with a number of standards and requirements, including the MIL-STD-2155 FRACAS standard from which the system is derived.
Additional standards and requirements that involve FRACAS, are FRACAS-related, or can benefit from FRACAS, include:
- ISO-9001
- ISO/TS16949
FRACAS compliance is heavily reliant upon the closed-loop nature of the system, which — essentially by default — enables adherence to numerous requirements.
Benefits of implementing FRACAS
FRACAS can provide numerous benefits to manufacturers. These include:
- Improved Reliability: Reliability is one of the core goals and tenets of the FRACAS framework. By implementing a standardized way of documenting and addressing failures of any type — equipment, process and more — and introducing failure analysis and corrective action as part of the process for any failure, FRACAS creates incremental, trackable, actionable reliability improvements that add up to significant productivity and bottom-line benefits over time.
- Cost Optimization: FRACAS helps to maximize the return on investment of nearly any resource or asset in the facility. It achieves this by seeking to address the root cause of any failure condition and to then remedy it, resulting in more efficient overall production.
- Reduced Downtime & Inefficiencies: Offline equipment is one of the most common results of a failure condition in the facility — and unplanned downtime in manufacturing is the most significant cause of lost efficiency and productivity in the facility. With the stated objective of corrective action to conclude the cycle of any failure state, FRACAS helps to reduce unplanned downtime and ultimately create greater equipment and process efficiency and ROI.
- Emphasis on Data Collection: With today’s industrial technology, including machine health monitoring methods such as using industrial sensors, there is no shortage of ways to collect equipment performance data. FRACAS seeks to leverage this data by digging beyond superficial remedies to identify the root cause of failures, based on equipment history, performance data, maintenance events and more.
- Improved Quality & Safety: With a FRACAS protocol identifying root causes of failure, the rate of defective products can be reduced to a significant degree. At the same time, preventing equipment failures also leads to safer workplaces with fewer accidents.
A FRACAS system can require a significant amount of time and cost to implement — and take time to realize a return on that investment — but it provides the foundation for a structured, standardized, repeatable set of processes throughout the facility, leading to increased productivity, greater efficiency and improvements to the bottom line. To learn more about how ATS can help you implement or optimize a FRACAS protocol for your operations, contact us today.
