Determining the root cause of motor failure

The motor failed. You had a predictive maintenance program on the motor, yet it failed. Take the opportunity to conduct a focused "single-point failure" analysis to determine the root cause of the failure using the following guidelines:

Identify your subject matter experts-techs, OEMs, operators, etc. Get at least three or four people that are most qualified to participate, and bring them together to collect the following:

• Identify the actual function of the motor-what does the owner/user expect it to do? Be specific.
• Identify the way or ways it can fail to deliver expectations (a spreadsheet or white board works fine).
• Identify the present maintenance tasks that are in place for this motor.
• Identify tasks such as condition based monitoring, scheduled restoration, scheduled discard, that could reduce the risk of a repeated failure. Be specific-identify time periods, 'okay', 'alarm', 'warning' and 'critical' criteria for the measurable condition based tasks, including the actions to take for each of these states.

The results of you and your team on the root cause failure analysis, when done correctly will provide a much higher degree of reliability and availability for not only your motors, but to any equipment for which you apply the methodology.

These are well-proven, results-oriented steps to bring you, your team and your company to a higher degree of success.

Thanks to David Koenig, E & I maintenance supervisor of Green Bay Packaging, Arkansas Kraft Division, in Morrilton, Ark., for today's tip.

For more information, visit the PdMA Web site at www.pdma.com.