Failure Catalog

The failure catalog is the controlled vocabulary your floor uses to describe a breakdown. Free-text descriptions live on the work order for context, but the catalog codes are the part that powers Pareto analysis, repeat-failure detection, and reliability KPIs. Without a catalog, every breakdown is a snowflake and “what fails most often on our presses?” is unanswerable.

Beelocity ships a three-tier classification: Problem → Cause → Remedy.

Problem codes

What was observed. Picked by the operator at work-request time, before any diagnostic. Each problem code has:

• A stable short identifier (the shipped catalog uses codes like PROB-STOP, PROB-VIB, PROB-LEAK).
• A human label.
• A default severity (H / M / L) — combined with asset criticality to compute the SLA tier on new requests.
• A description (what the operator would observe).
• Optionally, the asset classes this problem applies to — drives the dropdown filter so a forklift submitter doesn’t see CNC-specific options.

Keep the problem list short — a dozen problems per asset class is usually enough.

Cause codes

Why it failed. Picked by the technician after diagnosis. Each cause has:

• A stable identifier (the shipped catalog uses codes like CAUSE-BEARING-WEAR, CAUSE-OVERLOAD, CAUSE-POWER).
• A human label and description.
• A category — WEAR, OPERATIONAL, EXTERNAL, DESIGN, INSTALLATION, UNKNOWN. Drives the Pareto bucketing on the cause analysis report.
• Optionally, applicable asset classes.

Causes are typically many-to-one with problems: a single observed problem can have several plausible causes, and the technician picks which one actually happened.

Failure mode mappings

For asset classes where you’ve published reliability data — CNC mills, hydraulic presses — the failure mode mapping narrows the cause picker on the technician’s UI. A mapping says: “for the CNC mill class and the excessive-vibration problem, the relevant causes are bearing wear, misalignment, overload.” The technician sees only the realistic list rather than the full vocabulary.

Mappings are optional, and you author them yourself — the shipped catalog seeds problem, cause, and remedy codes only, never any mappings, so a new organization starts with none. Classes with no mappings show the full filtered-by-class cause list until you curate your own pairs.

Remedy codes

What was done. Picked at WO close. Each remedy has:

• A stable identifier (the shipped catalog uses codes like REM-REPLACE, REM-REPAIR, REM-CALIBRATE, REM-CLEAN, REM-LUBE, REM-NO-FAULT, REM-ESCALATE-OEM).
• A human label and description.
• A consumes_parts flag — true for replacement-style remedies. The UI prompts the technician to confirm part issues at WO close.
• A warranty_eligible flag — false disqualifies warranty claims.
• A no fault found flag — marks a “nothing wrong” close, which feeds the no-fault-found-rate report.
• An OEM escalation flag — marks a job sent to the manufacturer or claimed under warranty, which feeds the warranty-exposure report.

The shipped catalog includes REM-NO-FAULT (“No fault found”) as a first-class remedy so you can track spurious calls — a rising no-fault rate flags either over-reactive reporting or a vague problem catalog — and REM-ESCALATE-OEM for jobs handed to the manufacturer under warranty.

Picker UX

The UI never shows the entire catalog at once:

• Problem picker on work-request creation: filtered to the asset’s class.
• Cause picker on diagnosis: filtered first by failure-mode mappings; falls back to class-based filtering when no mapping exists.
• Remedy picker on WO close: filtered by the WO’s flavour — BREAKDOWN, CORRECTIVE, and DISPOSAL show the full list; PREVENTIVE, INSPECTION, and CALIBRATION show a reduced list of remedies that don’t consume parts (adjust, clean, lubricate, calibrate, no-fault-found) because the typical preventive close doesn’t need the full breakdown vocabulary.

Reports

The codes drive a small set of canned reports:

• Top problems by asset class — the Pareto of what’s breaking, last 90 days.
• Top causes by problem — tells engineering whether a vibration problem is mostly bearings or mostly installation.
• No-fault-found rate — the share of breakdown work orders closed with a “no fault found” remedy (e.g., REM-NO-FAULT). A rising rate flags either over-reactive reporting or a vague problem catalog.
• Warranty exposure — count (and cost) of breakdown work orders that happened while the asset was still inside its warranty window but were repaired in-house instead of being escalated to the manufacturer (e.g., with REM-ESCALATE-OEM). The money you left on the table by fixing it yourself when the OEM was on the hook.