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Electrical Troubleshooting Quiz — Nov. 7, 2017

Nov. 7, 2017
Failure modes must be accurately and specifically identified and entered into your CMMS.

Your company assigned you temporarily to a plant that is having problems filling orders due to excessive downtime. In particular, the plant has a high incidence of downtime due to “motor problems.” In many cases, the problem is fixed without replacing the motor, but the remaining cases indicate a motor failure rate that’s also excessive.

You ran various reports from the computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) and no pattern emerged. There’s no record of what kinds of problems were fixed without replacing the motor, and there’s no failure mode shown for the motors that were replaced.

Absent information from the CMMS, what are some first steps you can take to identify the most likely downtime causes? And what must the maintenance department do differently going forward?

Start with power analysis on the motor supply circuits; low power factor or voltage imbalance could be a root cause of motor failure. Inspect bonding, too. Try to locate the replaced motors, and send them to a motor shop for forensic analysis.

As for the downtime incidents that occurred without motor replacement, talk to the repair techs to find out what they did. If they simply replaced motor overloads, for example, that’s a good clue you’ve got power supply problems (e.g., low power factor), load problems (e.g., dry gearboxes), alignment problems, or any combination thereof.

Going forward, failure modes must be accurately and specifically identified and entered into the CMMS.

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