Failure Finding Maintenance

Failure-finding maintenance tasks are employed to discover equipment faults that are not detected during normal crew operations (e.g., hidden failures). Because these failures are hidden, if proper maintenance is not performed, a second failure must occur, and a failure consequence realised before the equipment fault is detected. For example, a standby electrical generator failing to start on loss of power may only be discovered when the primary generator fails, and power is lost. Because these types of faults result in hidden failures, condition-monitoring or planned-maintenance tasks are typically not an effective failure management strategy. Failure-finding maintenance tasks usually involve a functional test of the equipment to ensure the equipment is available to perform its function(s) when demanded.