Day 1
- RCFA Concepts
- RCFA philosophy and the four-step problem solving approach
- Troubleshooting vs. failure analysis
- Case Study: The Mast Mounted Sight
- Group Discussion: Current failure analysis challenges
- Role of the RCFA Leader
- Leadership, management, and motivation
- Situational leadership
- Instilling a sense of time-based urgency
- Incident resolution vs. more in-depth root cause failure analyses
- Keeping meetings short and maintaining analysis momentum
- Boots on the ground: Management By Wandering Around
- Assuring rapid root cause identification and corrective action
- Stress management
- Group discussion: Current leadership challenges
- Activity: Instilling a sense of urgency
- Selecting the Appropriate Analysis Approach
- Brainstorming, FMEA, mind-mapping, 5-Whys technique, Ishikawa diagrams, flow charting, and fault tree analysis reviews
- Matching the analysis approach to the failure analysis challenge
- Group discussion: Current analysis approach challenges
- Activity: Analysis approach selection
- The Failure Analysis Team
- Selecting an appropriate team
- Familiarity versus a fresh look
- Functional discipline participation
- Purchasing, Quality Assurance, Engineering, Operations, and Field Service contributions
- Activity: RCFA team member selection
- Developing an Action Plan
- Using Failure Mode Assessment and Assignment (FMA&A) matrices for analysis management
- Failure analysis meetings
- Addressing action item delinquencies
- Conquering analysis plateaus
- Activity: Preparation of an FMA&A
- Case Study Homework Assignment
Day 2
- Case Study Review
- Managing Potential Cause Evaluation
- What’s different, pedigree, and conformance analysis
- Basic metallurgical and electronic component evaluations
- Specialty technologies
- Welding, piping, pump, and leak failures
- Intermittent failures
- Integrating supplier inputs
- Commercial failure analysis laboratories
- Testing to confirm failure causes
- The RCFA/Design of Experiments relationship
- Activity: Updating the FMA&A
- Eliminating Recurring Failures
- Drilling down
- Overcoming the “we’re special” syndrome
- Overcoming ego
- Case studies
- Activity: Drilling deeper for elusive recurring failure causes
- Corrective and Preventive Action
- Corrective and preventive action definitions
- Corrective and preventive action order of precedence
- Using FMA&As for corrective and preventive action management
- Assessing risk
- Managing preventive action risk versus return
- Corrective and preventive action case studies
- Lessons Learned applications
- Activity: Selecting appropriate near- and long-term corrective and preventive actions
- Looking for Trouble: Proactive vs. Reactive Approaches
- Troubleshooting vs. Failure Analysis
- Troubleshooting definition
- Speed and accuracy: Obtaining meaningful results rapidly
- Using the fault tree and FMA&A to focus and prioritize troubleshooting
- Using the fault tree to expedite troubleshooting
- Activity: Streamlining troubleshooting and the RCFA investigation on a complex system failure
- Keeping Management Informed
- Progress reports
- FMA&A distribution
- A suggested failure analysis procedural
- A suggested failure analysis report format
- Defining Success
- Establishing success criteria as an integral RCFA component
- Monitoring corrective/preventive action efficacy
- Course Recap, Q/A, and Evaluations