PROACT: A Consultant’s Review

Needless to say, I was very impressed when introduced to the PROACT software. It has an extremely friendly user interface (in some cases, I can even use drag and drop options!) which is very easy to navigate even for a beginner like me at the time. What I really love about the software is that it bridges the gaps and guides users (both for beginners and experts) on the RCA process. By allowing users to follow a step a by step process it ensures that users don’t forget vital pieces of information that are absolutely critical to the RCA.

If you are familiar with RCA, you will be aware that the basis of any RCA is properly establishing the Severity of the failures. As such, the first step when the user enters the software, is the assigning of the Severity of the failure with the Severity Calculator. This calculator can even be customized for varying applications! Afterwards, the profile of the failure is then defined. This profile allows the user to identify elements that may have been forgotten if the RCA was being done from scratch. The Severity Calculator also allows users to determine the type of analysis that is fit for the severity index. Depending on the severity, the user can be guided to use either; 5 Whys, Fish Bone Diagrams or Cause and Effect Logic Trees. This is definitely one key advantage since it allows for different forms of analysis based on the severity.

Next the Critical Success Factors are inserted. The strategic placement for the input of these factors at this point in the analysis is purely genius! It forces the user to determine which factors directly impact them and these are usually placed on the final report. These CSFs start shaping the pending RCA into the mould that we need. Once these CSFs are established, then the objectives need to be defined. These help the analyst in guiding their RCA and ensuring that it is kept focused. It is easy to become distracted when performing these types of analyses since users are presented with an abundance of information. The definition of these aspects help the analyst to keep on track.

As with any RCA, there must be a team involved. The PROACT software allows users to delegate different tasks to different team members! It can even track the status of these events. Instead of sending long reminder emails (which tend to choke one’s inbox and can be easily missed), it is essentially easier to view the status of the assigned tasks using the PROACT software. This is a definite advantage of the software!

Now to the core of the software, the development of the RCA! Users are allowed to define the event that lead to the failure. Here’s where the software gets very interesting!!! Users can pull from existing templates dependent on the type of failure! This is the highlight of the PROACT software for a user like myself! It is very interesting to view templates (there are over 300 templates) of common failures and compare these to what the user has actually experienced. It allows the user to be able to access years of experience of a consultant at their fingertips! The team at Reliability Center Inc have definitely put a lot of work into developing these templates and have drawn upon their actual field experience for the past30+ years! This is the absolute game changer for the software!

During the building (or growing) of the Cause and Effect Tree, the user is allowed to authenticate their hypotheses and can attach pictures from the failure as verification for ruling out or accepting that mode as one of the root causes. These pictures can then be input into the final report without the need for cropping, cutting and pasting and all the exciting formatting issues that tend to occur when trying to include pictures in the final report.

PROACT also allows for users to input financial data. Another game changer for me! Users can define the costs associated with the downtime for particular failures, repair costs or even manpower costs. These all help to put a financial value on the cost of the failure being investigated. This neat trick is crucial for the review by upper management! Additionally, the final steps in any of the RCAs is to determine recommendations for the latent causes that were determined. These will be the courses of action to be taken to prevent failures of this nature from occurring in the future.

Overall, the PROACT software is indeed a time saver, keeps excellent track of the findings and collections of the investigation at hand and produces a very succinct, detailed report that anyone from upper management to the engineers can clearly understand. I love working with this software and my clients are always very impressed that this type of software actually exists and is so easy to use! I would highly recommend any user (novice or expert) in the reliability field to use the software in their everyday tasks and realize the impact that it has on increasing the efficiency of RCAs and their ROIs to their organizations.

About the Author

Sanya Mathura, is the Managing Director at Strategic Reliability Solutions where she is leading the efforts to shape the future of maintenance and reliability in Trinidad and Tobago. Sanya has her Machinery Lubrication Engineer certification from the International Council of Machinery Lubrication and is the first in Trinidad and Tobago to achieve this designation. With clients in the automotive, industrial, marine, construction, and transportation sectors, many have benefited from Sanya’s Reliability programs and problem-solving abilities.

Sanya can be contacted at [email protected] or http://strategicreliabilitysolutions.com/