Failure modes, and the type of data that you capture will influence the conclusions you can make about your equipment. If you have one pump or several pumps with a specific failure mode, then you can perform a very specific analysis. If you have many pumps with many different failure modes, then your analysis will be less specific.
For example, if you want to know the chances of a certain part on the pump failing, and in your dataset you have several pumps that have failed in that way, then your analysis will be more accurate than using data with multiple failure modes. If you are analyzing all of the pumps at your site, and you have many different reasons for failure, you will be able to determine overall failure statistics. This analysis, however, will not be particularly useful in determining the probability of failure of a specific piece of equipment.
Failure modes can be classified as independent and dependent failures. An independent failure is not caused by another failure but a dependent failure is caused by another failure. As a reliability analyst, you must evaluate which failures should be part of an analysis to obtain correct and specific results. You can follow failure coding standards, such as ISO 14224:2006 for best results. These standards provide guidelines to collect reliability and maintenance data in a standard format for equipment in all facilities in an organization.
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