Troubleshooting is the systematic process of identifying, analyzing, and resolving faults in an asset or system. Methodically isolating and addressing each potential issue helps technicians uncover the root causes of failures and enables smooth operation while minimizing downtime.
Even with the best preventive maintenance, every asset will fail at some point. When failure doesn’t have a clear cause, it may require further investigation, such as gathering information from sensors, reviewing past maintenance history, observing the asset in action, or taking other steps to help identify the cause.
Modern assets are highly complex, which means that troubleshooting is also a complicated process — but it’s more than worth the effort. Effective troubleshooting reduces repair time and helps prevent recurring issues, ultimately enhancing system performance.
How Do You Troubleshoot?
Troubleshooting problems require gathering data and using that information to develop a solution. In maintenance, troubleshooting may involve some trial and error to find the root cause of the problem. It also involves gathering data from the people who use the assets, sensors on the asset, or even historical data about the machine itself to help identify the cause of the failure.
When Should You Troubleshoot?
You will need to troubleshoot when a machine has failed completely and the cause of failure isn’t clear. You may also need to troubleshoot when the machine is still operational but isn’t working as expected. If it’s not operating as quickly as it should, or if it’s producing materials that are outside of specifications, troubleshooting can help identify and correct the cause.
You can also troubleshoot when the machine is operating as it should but has some anomalies. For example, an employee may notice an unusual noise coming from a machine, or a temperature sensor may send an alarm that the temperature is exceeding normal parameters.
Even though the machine may appear to be operating correctly, strange noises or temperature changes can indicate future problems. In both of these cases, troubleshooting can help address the problem before it leads to complete asset failure.
Why Should You Troubleshoot?
Sometimes, the reason for asset failure or maloperation is clearly identifiable. But in other cases, the reason isn’t so clear. When issues remain elusive, you’ll need to troubleshoot to identify and correct the source of the failure.
Troubleshooting is key to keeping assets in proper working condition. Instead of replacing the entire asset, finding the source of the failure and replacing parts or making other tweaks can extend its longevity and produce major savings over the machine’s lifespan.
Who Should Perform Troubleshooting?
Troubleshooting is often carried out by experienced technicians — the people who have already seen just about every maintenance situation you can imagine, and whom understand how to deal with tricky issues.
What happens, though, when you don’t have a deep bench of experienced technicians on your maintenance team?
Today, many organizations are operating with lean maintenance crews. The expertise gap is growing, as more experienced technicians reach retirement age and leave the workforce. The good news is, with the right tools and strategies, even inexperienced teams can still troubleshoot effectively.
Smart, connected tools, like sensors, CMMS, and AI, can all help identify the root causes of asset faults. A good CMMS, like eMaint, stores and organizes asset health data and work order history. eMaint CMMS can even auto-generate work orders whenever asset vibration levels cross a pre-determined threshold.
A CMMS can also create detailed, structured work orders, complete with checklists and photos. This ensures that your technicians have a standardized, tried-and-true method of troubleshooting. A mobile CMMS app helps technicians in the field and enables quick communication with other team members. Likewise, cloud-connected tools like eMaint CMMS make it easy to connect with remote experts for troubleshooting tips.
How Can You Make Troubleshooting Easier?
No matter how experienced you are, troubleshooting can be a challenge. Fortunately, there are tools and tricks to make the process easier — and more successful.
Using a standard operating procedure makes a big difference. Following a checklist of procedures ensures that the work goes smoothly and nothing important is forgotten. This is also helpful as a training tool for less experienced team members.
Having the right tools at your disposal, like high-quality condition monitoring meters and alignment tools, also makes the troubleshooting process more successful. And of course, a good CMMS is essential for a modern troubleshooting process to work.
CMMS software stores, organizes, and analyzes all of your maintenance data. It’s your central repository for critical asset health data, work order history, preventive maintenance records, and much more. eMaint CMMS lets you create detailed reports in just moments, so that you can easily drill down into asset history and figure out why a particular machine is malfunctioning today.
What Are the Benefits of Troubleshooting?
Troubleshooting has a lot of benefits that can be felt across the entire organization. These are:
Reduced Costs
Repairing an asset is often less costly than replacing it. Troubleshooting helps you identify and correct the root cause of the problem without needing costly asset replacement.
Improved Maintenance Practices
Troubleshooting can help identify patterns in breakdowns and help maintenance teams identify areas where they could implement preventive maintenance to reduce the number of breakdowns that occur.
Improved Maintenance Planning and Management
Long term, troubleshooting can help with asset lifecycle management. By uncovering more data about asset maintenance needs, troubleshooting helps teams make smart repair-or-replace decisions. This can also improve processes like inventory management by establishing an estimated timeframe for part replacement. Budgeting and forecasting also benefit from troubleshooting-derived data.
Reduced Downtime
We all know that downtime is expensive. While avoiding it isn’t always possible, troubleshooting developing issues can help correct problems before they lead to unexpected or prolonged outages. Troubleshooting operational assets that are overheating, making strange noises, emitting odd odors, or exhibiting other red flags can prevent more severe issues like failure, stopping unplanned downtime in the future.
Why Is Troubleshooting Important?
No matter how carefully you maintain your assets, the occasional breakdown is bound to happen. That’s when troubleshooting comes into play. Effective troubleshooting can pinpoint the root cause of the issue, find a solution, and get your equipment up and running again quickly — done right, troubleshooting takes the sting out of machine failure.
Let’s face it: downtime can be devastating due to associated spending, lost productivity, and wasted resources. Successful troubleshooting slashes downtime, keeping your costs low and keeping your production schedule on track. By identifying the root cause of each machine fault, you can extend asset lifespan and reduce long-term maintenance costs. It’s a great way to boost operational efficiency throughout the organization.
Tools for Improving Troubleshooting
The right tools and strategies can elevate troubleshooting to the next level. The best tools leverage data-driven insights to find the exact cause of machine failure and resolve it.
It’s a good practice to collect asset health data (like vibration levels, temperature, and oil quality) using a network of condition monitoring sensors. The sensors stream data to the cloud in real-time. Tools like CMMS software or AI-powered diagnostic engines can quickly analyze all that data and alert you to the first signs of a machine fault.
Besides sensors and software, certain time-tested maintenance strategies can also improve troubleshooting success rates.
Fault tree analysis maps out the causes of machine failure, helping technicians to spot exactly where things first went wrong in the asset lifecycle.
Failure codes define and describe asset failures, helping to standardize reporting and making it easier to understand how to prevent those failures in the future.
Failure Mode and Effect Analysis, or FMEA, identifies the causes of failures and anticipates the wider impact of every component and asset failure.
Standardized maintenance workflows can speed up the troubleshooting process. Standardizing workflows also makes it easier to look back and identify where something went wrong.
Tracking work orders and PMs gives managers insight into which maintenance tasks may be slipping through the cracks, potentially causing asset failure.
7 Steps for Troubleshooting
Troubleshooting steps may vary based on the type of equipment you are analyzing, but these general steps can help guide you.
- Define the problem: Start by gathering information about the problem. Check error codes, alarms, and abnormal symptoms (such as noise, heat, or vibration). If available, check the maintenance and usage history of the asset as well as its manual to help identify where the problem area could be.
- Understand the asset’s normal operating conditions: Compare data about the asset’s typical performance to its current performance for parameters such as temperature, pressure, or speed. This can help narrow down the issue.
- Check the basics: Verify the asset has the correct power supply and connections. Check for obvious issues like loose wires, broken connectors, or worn components.
- Isolate the problem area: Use tools like a digital multimeter (DMM) or oscilloscope to test components. If available, gather information from condition-monitoring tools like vibration or temperature sensors.
- Analyze your data: Look at all the information you’ve gathered from various sources and analyze what could be causing the problem.
- Implement your solution: After identifying the problem, craft a solution. If more than one issue exists, begin with the simplest fixes before moving on to more complicated repairs.
- Monitor the results: Continue monitoring the results over time to make sure the problem doesn’t reoccur. Document your solution and any insights so future technicians can access them.
Using a CMMS for Troubleshooting
Proper troubleshooting involves gathering and analyzing information from many sources. The asset’s manual, maintenance history, standard operating procedures, and past troubleshooting attempts can all shed light on the ultimate cause of failure. That information can be hard to track down unless you have it stored in a central information hub like a CMMS.
A CMMS stores all the information you need to troubleshoot and make repairs. Instead of tracking down multiple sources, all the information is stored in the cloud and easily accessible to any technician working on the asset.
Using a CMMS for troubleshooting is the best way to get assets working properly, saving valuable time and minimizing costly outages. And as a single source of truth for your organization, the maintenance information stored in a CMMS can help justify asset repair or replacement decisions.
Request a demo of eMaint to see how a CMMS can help technicians solve troubleshooting problems even faster.