Learning about failure root causes through maintenance records analysis

The exploitation of the equipment maintenance records is often a weak point within an operations management organization. Inexistence of a proper computerized maintenance management system, lack of competencies to properly handle maintenance data, or reduced knowledge in advance maintenance data processing techniques, are common problems to solve in order to benefit from the historical record of failures and maintenance operations carried out on certain equipment. This paper presents the learning obtained in a case study of the maintenance records of earthmoving equipment. We characterize the process to do a maintenance records analysis, describe difficulties and critical points of our sample study and present how this analysis could help in the process of identifying different root causes of critical fault modes. Finally, we present and discuss results and conclusions of the study.