rca case study

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by Bob Latino

Updated: January 5, 2022

Nylon Plant Case Study

Reading Time: 2 minutes

This case study took place at a nylon plant in Virginia which at the time provided major amounts of nylon to the tire and carpet industries. The plant was incapable of achieving design capacity of 334,000,000 lbs. annually.

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by Bob Latino

Updated: January 5, 2022

Reliability.com: Ammonia Plant Case Study

Reading Time: 3 minutes

This case study takes place in a Louisiana ammonia plant. The plant had above industry average downtime (116 Days of downtime compared to an industry average of 49.5 Days (worst record in the world for this type of facility).

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by Bob Latino

Updated: April 23, 2024

Optimizing RCA and FMEA in Health Care

Reading Time: 12 minutes

“Failure Mode and Effect Analysis” (FMEA) and “Root Cause Analysis” (RCA) are becoming commonplace terms in work environments and in the literature. This article will demonstrate that these terms, while seemingly generic references to regulatory compliance, actually elicit various interpretations from individuals. Therefore, applications of FMEAs and RCAs will be equally disjointed, along with the inconsistency of the analysis results.

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by Bob Latino

Updated: May 2, 2024

Defining Root Cause Analysis (RCA)

Reading Time: 7 minutes

In this blog, I discuss the RCA definition I used as a career analyst/investigator and explain why it makes sense to me. You decide if it makes sense in your facility. RCA is so ill-defined that no matter what people use to solve problems at their facilities (i.e.- troubleshooting, brainstorming, problem-solving or scribbling on a bar napkin)…they will call it

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by Bob Latino

Updated: December 11, 2023

3 Steps to Improve Your Root Cause Analysis

Reading Time: 5 minutes

There are various ways for us to improve our root cause analysis and take our reliability to the next level. Reliability professionals could do RCAs on a napkin, using kraft paper and post it notes, or utilizing fancy software. In the end, the analysis is only as good as the analyst! I have seen some pretty bad ‘RCA’s documented in

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by Bob Latino

Updated: October 22, 2024

The 5 Reasons Why Most RCA Efforts Fail to Have a Lasting Impact

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Most of us have all worked at places with some degree of an ‘RCA’ effort. They likely all defined and practiced ‘RCA’ differently, but nonetheless they had something called RCA. What made one facility better at it than another?  Why was one facility’s RCA more effective than another?

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by Bob Latino

Updated: January 5, 2022

Why Trending Data is Important

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Why Trending Data is Important Case Study: Predictive Activities – Trending {{cta(‘236ffbef-9183-4718-9aa0-b9b2e33e85c9’)}} This case history takes place in a packaging facility in Virginia. The packer on module E5 was checked for vibration integrity during a pre- machine care evaluation. A problem was detected in the folding arm gearbox. The frequency characteristics indicated a bearing was deteriorating. This seems very straight

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by Bob Latino

Updated: January 5, 2022

How Failed Parts Work Into an RCA

Reading Time: 9 minutes

How Failed Parts Work Into an RCA Author’s Note: I want to reiterate that this Series about reading the basic fracture surfaces, is for novices who often come into contact with such failed components. This Series is about the basics (101), and is intended to give readers an appreciation for the value of such ‘broken’ parts to an effective investigation/RCA.

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