24/08/2026
Why Do Equipment Fail?
The discussion of equipment failure is central in every industry or plant. It is the basic concern of both board members in the C-Suite and the technician at the shop floor. It is the stuff of nightmares for managers, especially those in charge of maintenance. It is the single factor that everyone would love to wish away. But it's going nowhere anytime soon. It's the reason why consultants thrive, salesmen are excited and the service industry continues to churn out solutions for our hard-earned dollars. It's the reason those of us in the maintenance and reliability space still have a job. Fact is, failure is a natural occurrence and equipment left to itself, like any other thing, would eventually fail.
On the flip side, our organizations are meant to continuously create value from the assets that are prone to failure, hence the cat-and-mouse race of trying to prevent our equipment from failing. Lots of organizations employ various methods to prevent failures, from variations in maintenance strategies to training strategies, spares management, continuous improvement methods and, with the advent of the Industrial Internet of Things, wireless condition monitoring.
Before considering the basic question of why equipment fails, we must first of all define what failure actually entails because a wrong definition of failure would definitely lead to wrong diagnostics of failure.
Failure for equipment is defined as when equipment is:
Unable to function at all
Unable to function at a rate
Unable to meet QHSE standards
This implies that we don’t need a complete breakdown for equipment to be termed as “failed”. The reason behind this definition is the clear fact that equipment as a whole does not really fail as such, but the component parts that make up that equipment are what actually fail. Hence, a component failure, depending on its criticality, can result in a total breakdown, loss of rate or QHSE issues.
With this background knowledge, we can understand the dynamics of equipment failures. And understanding equipment failures is critical to selecting a strategy to prevent these failures from occurring in the first instance.
I asked the question recently, “Why do equipment fail?” in a general forum. The answers came rolling out. I will explain my reservation about the answers I got shortly, but first, below are some instances that fellow M&R professionals pointed out as the causes of failure:
Manufacturing errors
Improper maintenance and installation
Fatigue
Wear & tear
Corrosion
Overloading
Lack of PM culture
Lack, over, under or bad lubrication practices
And much more
As a practicing professional, these causes are not an anomaly. These are the common causes most organizations would usually point to in the outcomes of their “Root Cause Analysis”.
But even in the best organizations that have put programs in place to address these issues pointed out, failures still occur.
The question is WHY?
An aspect worthy of consideration is the systems that support the maintenance of this equipment. These include the workplace culture, organizational structure, leadership model employed, skill level of workers, training or the lack thereof, and competence.
These are all people issues and contribute as much as the other technical bits mentioned earlier.
Most organizations would go on a spending spree on the latest available technology or programs in the market in order to cut back on failures and improve on equipment reliability.
But the truth remains that technology does not guarantee reliability or eliminate failures completely. It sure can do some good, but at the end, we cannot buy our way to reliability.
The causes of equipment failures are deeper than most would realize.
Recently, someone on one of my LinkedIn posts simply put it this way:
“Equipment fail because someone is killing them.”
And I agree with him.
I call it the HUMAN FACTOR.
In my career, I have seen this time and again, in large as well as small organizations, the battle against equipment failure. It's a human problem. It's our actions, inactions or ignorance.
It's the huge IGNORANCE GAP in our technician cadre in most organizations. It's a failure in leadership to see these IGNORANCE GAPS.
Take, for instance, a technician is handed a beautifully written SOP for a maintenance activity he has no idea why it should be carried out.
Would he do a proper job when he does not know the WHY or what to look out for?
He does not understand the FAILURE MODE the activity addresses and so cannot make a simple judgment call.
I know because I have been in that space. I have seen an activity that technicians believe adds no value or a job is poorly done because they lack the right knowledge.
So, if you ask me again, why do equipment fail?
Among other causes, I believe the largest culprit is plain old IGNORANCE.
The latent cause of this could be that those responsible are unaware that this ignorance even exists in the first instance.
I think we might need to start conducting IGNORANCE AUDITS in our workforce.
Since most technicians do not understand the WHY of the tasks they carry out, we end up with substandard outcomes and the result is equipment failures.
In the technologically advanced world we live in today, closing these gaps is quite easy.
The first step for both individuals and organizations is first recognizing that this gap exists and then creating a plan to have it closed.
It requires leadership, a break from the reactive culture and a collective effort to identify and close the learning gaps, carry out a defect elimination program and then move toward a reliability-oriented culture where everyone understands the essence of all the activities they are responsible for.
A simple training in FMEA, RCA and Defect Elimination would be a good start.
READY FOR TOMORROW?
We have explored the question:
Why Do Equipment Fail?
But tomorrow, we take the conversation further.
Join us for the Reliability Insight Series on 27th August as we dive deeper into equipment failure, reliability and the factors that influence how our assets perform.
If you work in maintenance, reliability, engineering, operations or asset management, this is a conversation you don't want to miss.
Are you ready for tomorrow?
📅 27th August
🎙️ Reliability Insight Series
Register now using the link below: 6ba57f24-7bd3-49c1-ba52-0280a185fc4b@4dcacc09-79db-455b-affc-4eed76852ada?source=copyLinkLegacyShareEventDialog" rel="ugc" target="_blank">https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/6ba57f24-7bd3-49c1-ba52-0280a185fc4b@4dcacc09-79db-455b-affc-4eed76852ada?source=copyLinkLegacyShareEventDialog
Don’t just react to equipment failures. Understand them.
