If somebody asked you how many times in the past eighteen months your maintenance department repaired or replaced a motor with damaged bearings, could you give the correct answer? If not, you have a maintenance documentation failure.
The solution begins with your list of reason codes. It should be long enough to include common failure reasons, but not so long that people get vertigo.
You might, for example, have nine failure reasons plus “other”. When using “other” make sure it has a write-in. And make sure you record (in the CMMS) what’s provided. For example, your list didn’t include rodent droppings but suddenly those are showing up in the repair logs.
You want items in “other” to be relatively rare. If something there is common, add it to your regular list as a selection (and perhaps remove one that isn’t happening as often as you thought it would).
Conduct a training session on reason codes to ensure people understand why accuracy is important. Make it clear that “unknown” is strongly preferred over guessing
