Sologic's Journey to FMEA

I feel like we have some explaining to do. Isn’t Sologic supposed to specialize in root cause analysis? What the heck are they doing mucking around in the world of Reliability? Well, of course there’s a story behind it! And here it is, to the best of my recollection…

One of our largest clients uses Sologic as a key part of their Reliability effort. Root cause analysis and complex problem-solving is, and always has been, Sologic’s bread and butter. From the very beginning, we’ve earned a reputation for diving in with our clients to learn what the world looks like from their perspective. We never have, and never will, cast “thoughtful pearls” from that ivory tower where so many consultants and “thought leaders” nestle into. We live to innovate and grow. And we earn trust along the way.

Our contact at this client was about to see just how far she could trust us with what was her latest problem. The conversation went something like this…

Contact: “I need you to develop and teach a class on Failure Modes and Effects Analysis.”
Me: “Yeah, we don’t really do that stuff – there are a ton of reliability consultants out there who can take that on”
Contact: “No. It has to be Sologic. I don’t have time to go find someone else. And you’re always yammering about how I can trust you to help when I need it – well, now I need it. And we do trust you to get it done. So get to work!”

Like I said – it went something like that…



And so began our journey into the universe of FMEA. We did go right to work. To be honest, it wasn’t entirely new. We’ve worked with reliability professionals for decades. And Chris Eckert (who was President of Sologic at the time, now Managing Director) is from that world originally. On his suggestion, we based our research on the seminal work “RCM II” by John Moubray. Chris was already familiar with it, but not me. So I read it cover to cover. Twice. I’ve come to believe that this book is one of the only perfectly organized textbooks that exists. It’s one of my very favorites and my deepest regret is that I never was able to take a class from Dr. Moubray himself. I know there is an RCM III version out and I’ve picked up a few tidbits from it as well. But the original really speaks to me. Anyway…

The request for a training class was one of the asks. The other was for us to facilitate a series of FMEAs on all kinds of different equipment. I won’t lie – that first one was hard! The reason is because I was trying to learn the FMEA process, learn about the equipment, and wrangle the team all at the same time. It was overwhelming and I didn’t sleep much that week. But through the trials of that first attempt, (and the patience of our sponsor!) I had a facilitation epiphany that has stuck with me ever since, which is to make the learning the first priority and don’t try to force-fit everything into structure of the FMEA process. I could organize it later. But with the team, make sure learning was taking place.

This made all the difference. We’ve since done a ton of FMEA work over the years and each one is a new opportunity to dive deep and learn lots of interesting and useful information about what makes a complicated piece of machinery or process work, how to keep it doing what we need it to do, and how to recover as quickly as possible when it decides to “take a little vacation”.

The final ask was to create a software module for Causelink that would allow us to store FMEA output in a more accessible and useful way than the Excel template we had been using. We have had the module available for a while now, but we are announcing it to the world this week. We couldn’t be more excited about adding this capability to Causelink. Now we can complete the cycle. Root cause analysis is a retrospective look-back at why/how something happened. Failure modes and effects analysis is a proactive look forward to see what could happen. They are like the right arm and left arm of structured problem-solving. And when we use HOP principles as the rules for how we engage with each other, the result allows us to make the most informed decisions possible.

At Sologic, we’re putting all these things together to help you manage uncertainty with confidence!

Brian