Advanced Machinery Failure Analysis and Diagnostics Training Course

Course overview

Repeated pump trips, bearing failures, gearbox overheating and unexplained vibration can consume maintenance budgets while production teams receive only temporary fixes. This course addresses the gap between identifying a failed component and proving the mechanism that caused it to fail. Participants learn to distinguish symptoms from root causes, interpret condition-monitoring evidence, and build defensible failure narratives that support repair, redesign, operating changes or maintenance-plan revisions.

The course covers structured failure analysis for rotating and stationary equipment, including fault-tree analysis, five-whys, causal factor charting, FMEA, Weibull analysis and reliability-centred maintenance links. Participants work with vibration spectra, oil-analysis results, thermography findings, ultrasonic readings and maintenance-history data to diagnose faults in bearings, shafts, couplings, gears, pumps, motors and lubrication systems. They gain practical skill in selecting diagnostic tests, assessing evidence quality, calculating failure metrics and prioritising corrective actions by risk, recurrence and production consequence.

Delivery combines instructor-led technical sessions with equipment failure cases, diagnostic-data interpretation workshops and team investigations. Participants use structured worksheets and failure-analysis templates to investigate realistic plant incidents, challenge alternative hypotheses and present corrective-action recommendations. Each participant leaves with a completed machinery failure-analysis case file, including an evidence log, causal analysis, fault-tree or causal-factor chart, corrective-action plan and a 90-day application plan for a live asset issue.

The programme suits maintenance and reliability professionals who already work around industrial assets and need a more rigorous approach to recurring failures. It is equally valuable to engineers and supervisors who must convert condition-monitoring results into decisions that operations, engineering and management can act on.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Construct a machinery failure evidence log that separates observations, test results, assumptions and verified facts
• Apply fault-tree analysis and causal factor charting to trace equipment failures to physical, human and system causes
• Interpret vibration spectra to identify common bearing, imbalance, misalignment, looseness and gear-mesh fault signatures
• Evaluate oil-analysis, thermography and ultrasound findings to confirm or eliminate competing failure hypotheses
• Perform Weibull analysis in Microsoft Excel to estimate failure behaviour, characteristic life and maintenance implications
• Develop an FMEA that ranks machinery failure modes using severity, occurrence, detection and recommended controls
• Select corrective actions that address failure mechanisms rather than symptoms, including design, lubrication and operating changes
• Produce a management-ready failure investigation report with evidence, causal findings, risk ranking and action ownership

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Reliability Engineers — who investigate recurring asset failures and revise reliability strategies
• Maintenance Engineers — who must diagnose equipment defects and specify lasting corrective actions
• Condition Monitoring Analysts — who need to convert diagnostic readings into verified failure conclusions
• Maintenance Supervisors — who prioritise repairs, direct troubleshooting teams and prevent repeat events
• Plant Engineers — who assess equipment design, operating conditions and modification requirements
• Operations and Asset Managers — who approve reliability investments and need evidence-based failure decisions

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have practical exposure to industrial machinery maintenance, operations or condition monitoring, ideally with six months or more of experience around pumps, motors, gearboxes, compressors or similar assets. They should understand basic mechanical terms such as bearings, shafts, lubrication, alignment and operating load, and be comfortable reading simple maintenance histories or inspection reports. Familiarity with vibration monitoring, oil analysis or Microsoft Excel is helpful but not essential; the course teaches the required diagnostic interpretation and spreadsheet analysis. No programming, advanced statistics, specialist certification or prior formal root-cause-analysis qualification is required.

Training methodology

The instructor introduces each diagnostic method through short technical briefings, then participants apply it to progressive machinery-failure cases. Workshops use vibration plots, oil reports, infrared images, work-order histories and operating data to test hypotheses rather than memorise fault labels. Small groups build fault trees, causal factor charts, FMEAs and Weibull plots, then defend their conclusions in review sessions. The final day is an application workshop in which participants turn a current or representative site problem into an investigation plan, corrective-action register and 90-day implementation schedule.

Course outline

Day 1: Failure Investigation Foundations

• Failure modes, mechanisms, symptoms and consequences
• Evidence preservation following machinery incidents
• Structured problem statements and failure timelines
• Five-whys limitations and causal factor charting
• Fault-tree analysis logic gates and event definitions
• Maintenance-history review using work orders and downtime records
• Failure investigation report structure and evidence grading

Workshop: Participants investigate a recurring centrifugal-pump trip and produce an evidence log, event timeline and initial fault tree.

Day 2: Condition Monitoring Data for Diagnosis

• Vibration measurement parameters and sensor placement
• FFT spectra, harmonics, sidebands and frequency resolution
• Bearing defect frequencies and envelope demodulation
• Imbalance, misalignment, looseness and resonance signatures
• Gear-mesh, belt-drive and electrical fault indicators
• Infrared thermography patterns for mechanical and electrical defects
• Ultrasound and oil-analysis evidence for lubrication and wear

Workshop: Participants review a motor-pump diagnostic data pack and produce ranked fault hypotheses supported by condition-monitoring evidence.

Day 3: Mechanisms, Reliability and Risk

• Rolling-element bearing damage mechanisms and failure patterns
• Lubrication contamination, viscosity selection and wear debris interpretation
• Shaft alignment, soft foot, balance and coupling failure mechanisms
• Gearbox wear, tooth damage and lubrication distress
• Weibull distribution concepts, beta shape and eta characteristic life
• Weibull plotting and failure-data analysis in Microsoft Excel
• FMEA scoring, criticality ranking and maintenance-strategy links

Workshop: Participants analyse a bearing and gearbox failure dataset in Microsoft Excel and produce a Weibull plot and risk-ranked FMEA.

Day 4: Root Cause and Corrective Action Design

• Physical, human and latent organisational causes
• Causal factor chart validation and evidence challenge
• Barrier analysis for inspection, lubrication and operating controls
• Distinguishing corrective actions from containment actions
• Design-out options for recurring machinery failure modes
• Reliability-centred maintenance task selection and interval review
• Corrective-action ownership, verification and closure criteria

Workshop: Teams conduct a root-cause review of a repeated gearbox failure and produce a causal chart, barrier analysis and corrective-action register.

Day 5: Integrated Failure Case and Site Application

• End-to-end failure investigation workflow
• ISO 14224 failure-data taxonomy and coding principles
• ISO 20816 vibration severity evaluation principles
• ISO 13374 condition-monitoring information flow
• Technical report writing for management and engineering review
• Cost, risk and production-consequence prioritisation
• Ninety-day machinery reliability improvement planning

Workshop: Participants complete an integrated machinery failure case file and present a prioritised corrective-action and 90-day application plan.

Tools & standards covered

Microsoft Excel, ISO 14224, ISO 20816, ISO 13374

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions