Troubleshooting can identify the problem

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Contact Support. Need some help? This approach can move things along and cut down on ambiguous responses. What should you ask? Does the issue affect just one person or many people? Did it occur right after a significant event on the computer or the network? Is the PC power on? Are they able to open their e-mail client? Can they send or receive email, or both? Ideally, this will help remove potential confusion related to the issue.

How can you answer the most common IT questions? Events logs: Do they exist, and if so, what exactly do they say? In addition to error messages, logs often provide a timestamp so you can answer the question of when exactly events happened.

Checking the Windows event viewer can be a first step in pointing you towards any relevant logs. Can the user provide screenshots, video, or other supporting information that can help assist in the troubleshooting process?

Diagnostics results: Have you run system utilities to get even more information? For example: ping can help you remotely check if a server or website in question is reachable.

Additionally, the Windows memory diagnostic can check for faulty memory, the resource monitor or performance monitor can check for unusually high CPU or memory usage, and a disk check can examine your hard drives for errors. Sometimes it will become apparent that what seems to be a single problem, is more accurately a series of sub-problems. For example, in the problem:. Useful ways of describing more complex problems are shown in the section, ' Structuring the Problem' , below.

During this first stage of problem solving, it is important to get an initial working definition of the problem. Although it may need to be adapted at a later stage, a good working definition makes it possible to describe the problem to others who may become involved in the problem solving process. For example:. The second stage of the problem solving process involves gaining a deeper understanding of the problem. Firstly, facts need to be checked. The questions have to be asked, is the stated goal the real goal?

Are the barriers actual barriers and what other barriers are there? In this example, the problem at first seems to be:.

This is also a good opportunity to look at the relationships between the key elements of the problem. The concept of multiple perspectives is important when dealing with people too. Solving the problem of just one or a small group of those involved, generally leads to resistance from other stakeholders. Instead, plan an integrated approach that takes the roles and goals of all key people involved in complex problems into consideration.

Define the boundaries of the problem. These boundaries should be sufficiently open to include all the relevant cause-effect relationships, but sufficiently narrow to avoid generalization and a loss of focus. Use these boundaries to create a new, clear description of the problem you are solving.

Identify causes, effects, and key stakeholders. What are the root causes of the problem and what are the possible effects of those causes? What are some potential solutions, and the effects of those solutions? Who are the key stakeholders who stand to benefit from a change in the system? How can they be part of the solution? Keep in mind that a single effect can be the result of multiple causes, and a single cause can have multiple effects on a system.

When taken to the next level, troubleshooting can ditch the trial-and-error moniker and become a purely scientific endeavour. This helps technicians find the right problems and solutions more quickly. When troubleshooting is done correctly, your whole maintenance operation can overcome backlog, lost production, and compliance issues much more efficiently.

It can be downright frustrating. Troubleshooting is the process of identifying what is wrong with these faulty systems when the problem is not immediately obvious. Troubleshooting usually follows a systematic, four-step approach; identify the problem, plan a response, test the solution, and resolve the problem. Steps one to three are often repeated multiple times before a resolution is reached. Think about it this way: When a conveyor belt breaks down, you may try a few different methods to fix it.

If this fails to fix the problem, you might replace the part, which makes the conveyor belt work again. This is troubleshooting. An asset breaks down and no one knows why.

You talk to the operator, read some manuals, and check your notes about the asset. You try a couple of things to get the machine up and working again with no luck. Before you can try a third or fourth possible solution, you get called away to another emergency, with the asset still out of commission. This is often how the process happens when troubleshooting for maintenance, especially when a facility relies on paper records or Excel spreadsheets. The process is based on collecting as much information as possible from as many sources as possible to identify the most likely cause of the breakdown.

Unexpected equipment failure is the entire reason troubleshooting exists. If assets never broke down without any clear signs of imminent failure, there would be no need to troubleshoot the problem. Yes, maintenance teams can use preventive maintenance and condition-based maintenance to reduce the likelihood of unplanned downtime. However, you can never eliminate it entirely. What you can do is put processes in place to reduce failure as much as possible and fix it as soon as possible when it does occur.

This is where strong troubleshooting techniques come in handy. Because troubleshooting will always be part of the maintenance equation, humans will also always have a role. Maintenance technology does not erase the need for a human touch in troubleshooting; it simply makes the process much more efficient. In short, knowing some troubleshooting best practices could be the difference between an overwhelming backlog and a stable maintenance program.

The following are just a few ways your operation can improve its troubleshooting abilities to conquer chaos and take control of its maintenance. Read more. When operators and technicians rely solely on their own past experience with a piece of equipment, it leaves with them with huge gaps in knowledge that hurt the troubleshooting process. For example, it leaves too much room for recency bias to affect decision-making, which means that technicians are most likely to try the last thing that fixed a particular problem without considering other options or delving further into the root cause.