Troubleshooting is the process of identifying and resolving equipment failures so an asset can return to normal operation. It’s closely related to root cause analysis (RCA), a more formal process for identifying the underlying cause of equipment failure. But troubleshooting is often the immediate effort to diagnose and fix a problem, while RCA goes deeper to prevent the problem from happening again.
So how do you help your maintenance team troubleshoot more effectively? It comes down to a combination of structured problem-solving processes and reliable equipment data.
Let’s explore some troubleshooting best practices.
Key takeaways
- Effective troubleshooting is a systematic process of elimination, not guesswork. Following a structured approach helps you identify root causes faster.
- Your equipment's historical data is a critical troubleshooting tool. Use a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) to analyze past work orders, maintenance logs, and failure patterns to inform your diagnosis.
- A key outcome of troubleshooting is the decision to repair or replace an asset. Base this decision on a clear analysis of total costs, including downtime, labor, and the potential benefits of new equipment.
- The primary goal of troubleshooting is to minimize unplanned downtime. By resolving issues efficiently, your team can restore production capacity and protect revenue.
Even as 74% of organizations report fewer unplanned outages, 31% say those incidents are more expensive than they were last year. Troubleshooting speed and accuracy have never mattered more.
Troubleshooting principles and best practices
Core troubleshooting principles
- Understand the system: Before you can fix a problem, you need to know how the equipment should function under normal conditions. Reviewing manuals and asset documentation helps establish a baseline for performance.
- Reproduce the problem: If it is safe to do so, try to replicate the failure. Understanding the specific conditions that trigger the issue points you straight to the root cause.
- Start with the simplest solution: Always check for the most obvious and easiest-to-fix issues first. This includes checking power sources, connections, and basic settings before moving on to more complex diagnostics.
- Change one variable at a time: When testing potential solutions, make only one change at a time. This allows you to isolate the true cause of the problem without introducing new variables that could complicate the diagnosis.
- Document everything: Keep a detailed record of the symptoms you observed, the steps you took, and the outcome of each action. This documentation saves hours on future troubleshooting and helps your entire team learn from each repair.
Why do you need to troubleshoot?
While preventive and condition-based maintenance can reduce equipment failures dramatically, eliminating failure entirely is difficult.
This is why your team needs to develop troubleshooting techniques. When an asset breaks down or operates abnormally (detected using techniques like temperature reporting and vibration analysis), troubleshooting skills help reduce downtime and ensure regulatory compliance.
Maintenance personnel need troubleshooting experience to solve problems effectively, which unfortunately requires assets to break down. While you can't substitute real experience, a CMMS can help maintenance teams access critical historical information instantly. A technician can quickly review past bearing failures, maintenance schedules, and performance data to identify patterns and speed up diagnosis.
How to troubleshoot assets
You can handle most troubleshooting by following a few guiding principles with this step by step process:
- Systematic approach: Follow predefined troubleshooting steps rather than guessing
- Data-driven decisions: Use equipment history and performance metrics to guide diagnosis
- Consistent methodology: Apply the same process regardless of equipment type or failure complexity
Step 1: Get clarity on the problem
Has the equipment stopped working? Is it just operating abnormally and may stop working? Have you noticed something odd about the equipment and can't determine if it might lead to a breakdown?
While some equipment has built-in mechanisms (such as an alarm, warning message, or error code) to alert teams to problems, other equipment simply stops working. The first step is to identify the problem. Once you've done that, you'll need to look at the equipment's operational data.
Step 2: Analyze equipment data
Once you've established the problem, look at the data. Begin by reading the standard equipment data from the operation and maintenance manual and troubleshooting guide. A maintenance management system puts all your equipment data at your fingertips, including maintenance logs, failure history, and parts usage. Tools like MaintainX Copilot make the process of consulting this data even easier.
Once you have the data, you can often track the cause of failure back to a recent change, like a changed spare part, a change in usage pattern, or a change in the raw material. Sometimes you may not identify the cause immediately. When this happens, look for unexpected data patterns or information gaps in your analysis.
Step 3: Test solutions
The next step is to devise a solution based on the cause. However, the problem may not have a known solution. In such cases, you'll need to test a few possible solutions.
As you test solutions, be mindful of costs and the team's safety. In some cases, replacing the equipment makes more sense than repairing it.
Should you replace or repair an asset?
While the cost of repairing an asset may seem lower than the cost of a new asset, maintenance on an asset that repeatedly fails can sometimes be more expensive over time.
For example, suppose a machine broke down several times over the past quarter. In that case, the cost of repairing it and the cost of downtime might exceed the cost of a new asset, especially when you factor in the value of improved efficiency and other benefits of a new asset.
However, you may need to prove this to the finance and admin teams. A maintenance platform like MaintainX, with robust key performance indicator (KPI) reporting features, can calculate downtime history.
Pros and cons of troubleshooting
Troubleshooting offers plenty of benefits, but the process isn’t without its downsides.
Pros of troubleshooting
- Minimize downtime: Effective troubleshooting helps you reduce expensive downtime.
- Save money: Besides cutting downtime, troubleshooting saves the time and money you'd spend on future repeat repairs and third-party repair services.
- Equipping the team with valuable experience: The more your maintenance team troubleshoots issues, the more experience they'll gain in finding solutions to fix these common issues later. Over time, their experience pays dividends.
Cons of troubleshooting
- Can be expensive: Troubleshooting takes serious time and effort from your maintenance teams, which costs money.
- Not helpful if you decide to replace: If the repair cost is high and replacement makes more sense, you'll have invested time and resources in troubleshooting only to discard the equipment.
- Availability of third-party services: Third-party services can sometimes offer help at a lower cost than troubleshooting in-house.
The final word: Modern tools transform troubleshooting effectiveness
Smart maintenance teams pair systematic troubleshooting with the right digital tools. MaintainX speeds up troubleshooting by putting all your equipment data in one place, so teams can spot multiple problems faster and cut expensive downtime.
After troubleshooting, MaintainX’s reporting features empower you to track the metrics that matter most. Monitoring this data helps you quickly identify common problems when they reappear so that you can take prompt action.
Ready to transform your troubleshooting process? Sign up for free and discover how MaintainX helps maintenance teams resolve equipment issues faster while building a foundation for proactive maintenance success.
Troubleshooting in manufacturing facilities FAQs
What are the standard troubleshooting steps for manufacturing equipment?
Industrial troubleshooting follows three core steps: identify the problem, analyze equipment data and maintenance history, then test solutions systematically. While different models use five or seven steps, they all follow an identify-analyze-test methodology that works across manufacturing, logistics, and processing facilities.
How do maintenance teams determine whether to repair or replace failed equipment?
Your team can make the repair-or-replace decision by comparing the total cost of repair with the cost of a new asset. This analysis should include parts and labor, along with the cost of associated downtime. You should also factor in the potential gains in efficiency, reliability, and safety that a new asset provides. The goal is to choose the option with the best long-term value for your operation.
What troubleshooting principles help manufacturing facilities reduce unplanned downtime?
Key principles include starting with the simplest potential solutions, changing only one variable at a time during testing, and thoroughly documenting every step you take. By understanding how the system should operate and trying to reproduce the problem safely, your team can diagnose issues more accurately. This systematic approach is far more effective at reducing downtime than random trial-and-error.
How long should troubleshooting take for critical manufacturing equipment?
Troubleshooting timeframes vary based on equipment complexity, but systematic approaches dramatically reduce resolution time. Teams using maintenance management platforms typically resolve issues faster than those relying on manual processes, since they can pull up asset history and maintenance data instantly.
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