About Recommendations

The details of the recommendations and the progress associated with getting the recommendation approved and implemented can be tracked using fields in RCA Recommendations records. When you create an RCA Recommendation, a link is created between the RCA Recommendation and the Root Cause analysis. You can then choose to link the RCA Recommendation to an Equipment or Functional Location. Depending on the nature of the recommendation, RCA Recommendations may or may not be linked to the same Equipment and Functional Locations that are linked to the Root Cause analysis.

For example, suppose you created a root cause analysis for a piece of equipment called Pump 1 that was shutting down more frequently than normal. You find that the pump is one of several pumps that are more than 10 years old. You create an RCA Recommendation to increase inspection rounds for Pump 1. Although the root cause analysis was performed for Pump 1, another similar pump, Pump 2, is the same age. You can create a new RCA Recommendation and populate the value in the Equipment ID field to Pump 2 so that the same recommendation can be applied.

Furthermore, if the Equipment Pump 1 is already linked to the Functional Location Row 12, you can change the value in the Functional Location ID field of the RCA Recommendation from Row 12 to reflect a higher level Functional Location, such as Statesville Plant. This value can serve as an indicator that pumps located at the Statesville Plant are older than other plants, which is more relevant than the information that Pump 1 is located in a certain row.

RCA and the fields in the RCA Recommendation facilitate the following general workflow for proposing and implementing recommendations:

1. After a hypothesis is proven true and a root cause is identified, the RCA Team discusses possible solutions.
2. After a recommendation has been developed, the analysis team creates an RCA Recommendation from the analysis. When the RCA Recommendation is created, the value in the Status field is populated by default.
3. The Analysis Team defines the details of the recommendation in the RCA Recommendation. If the recommendation is specific to a piece of equipment or location, the Analysis Team can define values in the Equipment ID and Functional Location ID fields to link the RCA Recommendation to the Equipment or Functional Locations that represents that equipment and locations.
4. After the RCA Recommendation is created to track the progress of the recommendation, an RCA Team member proposes the recommended solution to the decision makers in your organization using the details stored in the RCA Recommendation.
5. Your organization makes decisions about the recommendation (e.g., approve or reject), and the necessary fields (including the Status field) in the RCA Recommendation are updated to reflect these decisions.
6. After a recommendation has been approved (i.e., the value in the Status field is changed to Approved), it should be implemented within your organization. Alert emails can be scheduled and sent to a human resource for the person responsible for implementing the recommendation.
7. To implement the recommendation, you can create a work request in a maintenance management system (e.g., an SAP Notification, an Oracle EBS eAM Work Request) by setting the value in the Create Work Request field in the RCA Recommendation to True.

8. After the recommendation is implemented, the value in the Status field in the RCA Recommendation should be changed to Implemented, and the RCA Recommendation is considered complete.

   Note: This step is part of the Tracking and Reevaluating Analysis Results step in an RCA.

9. If the piece of equipment or location continues to fail, the RCA Recommendation should be flagged for reevaluation.
10. The team should meet to discuss the implemented recommendation, propose new recommendations, amend the original recommendations, and so on until an implemented solution prevents the piece of equipment or location from failing in the same manner that triggered the RCA.