Reliability Insights

The Waddington Effect

October 25, 2023

Is doing more maintenance ‘good’?

It’s common to think so. I mean, it makes sense

that the more maintenance you do… the less likely
your equipment is to fail.

Right?

But if that’s the case…

Why do we still suBer from poor reliability?

Why do we still struggle with emergency
breakdowns?
Why do we struggle with expensive maintenance
costs?

“Can’t we just do more maintenance to improve

reliability?”

Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. And research

shows otherwise. Waddington and his research
team proved just how wrong that conventional
thinking really is.

In this article, I talk about the ‘Waddington EBect’,

why it is important in today’s modern maintenance
programs, and what the implications are when it
comes to how we implement maintenance.

What is the Waddington

Effect?
In an article called “The Waddington E!ect”, Dr.
James P. Ignizio discusses the research work done
by C. H. Waddington during World War II.

He coined the term “Waddington EBect”, which

shows that preventive maintenance inspections of
British bombers increased the rate of breakdowns
immediately after their maintenance.

Figure 1. The Waddington EBect with Bomber

Command (Taken from the article: The Waddington
E!ect, C4 U-Compliance, and Subsequent Impact on
Force Readiness)

“As Waddington observed, the number of repairs

increased after maintenance, ultimately settling
down to roughly 6 repairs every 10 hours – at
about which time the next maintenance event
was scheduled.”

You can read the full article on Waddington’s work

here:

The Waddington E!ect, C4 U-Compliance, and

Subsequent Impact on Force Readiness

But to summarise…

Waddington and his team concluded that

maintenance inspections actually led to MORE
equipment malfunctions due to the disruption of
an otherwise satisfactory condition.

They argued that PMs were too frequent, and that

it could be the cause of, rather than the solution to,
emergency repairs.

To solve this, they proposed and ultimately

accepted improvements to the maintenance
schedule:

1. extending the time between repairs

2. identifying components that need to be included

or excluded in a particular maintenance event

3. better allocating and scheduling maintenance

staB

4. and developing clearer, more concise, and

unambiguous documentation.

Implementing these recommendations resulted in

a remarkable increase in airplane availability and
the eBectively increased the size of the British
Coastal Command air [eet by over 60%…

…but much less costly and time-consuming than

actually increasing the aircraft [eet.

What does this imply for our

preventive maintenance
programs?
The `ndings from Waddington’s research have
great implications for our modern maintenance
programs.

The Waddington EBect provides modern

maintenance programs with a blueprint for how to
approach asset management in a way that is
eacient, cost-eBective, and maximises equipment
lifespan. And to achieve that, there are three things
you need to understand and apply:

1) First, you can’t maintain your way to

reliability.

This is very evidently shown in Waddington’s

research.

In fact, he showed that doing more maintenance

actually results in more emergency repairs.

That’s because maintenance can only preserve

your equipment’s inherent design reliability and
performance. If the equipment’s inherent reliability
or performance is poor, doing more maintenance
will not help.

No amount of maintenance can raise the inherent

reliability of a design. To improve poor reliability or
performance that’s due to poor design, you need
to change the design. Simple.

When you encounter failures that relate to design

issues, you need to eliminate them. Sure, the more
proactive and more eacient approach is to ensure
that the design is right, to begin with. But all plants
startup with design defects. Even proactive plants.
And that’s why the most reliable plants in the world
have an eBective defect elimination program in
place.

2) Second, the more intrusive maintenance you

do, the more human errors you introduce.

Which results in more defects.

As I discussed in the article, Defect Elimination:

Why you can’t do without, up to 84% of all defects
are caused by careless work habits, which become
failures over random periods of time.

You see, we introduce defects at every stage of a

plant’s life cycle: during the design, construction,
and commissioning of our plants.

Including the operation and maintenance phases.

If you don’t tackle these defects, they will

eventually lead to failures.

3) And lastly, documentation is important.

Interestingly, the British Operational Research

team was particularly surprised at the signi`cant
impact that proper documentation had on
achieving these results.

I discuss in my course how documentations like job

plans and work instructions are key to your
success because they help you manage human
error, reduce variability, and improve safety.

Summary
The Waddington EBect suggests that more
maintenance is not always the solution to poor
reliability and emergency breakdowns. In fact, they
concluded that more maintenance inspections
actually led to more equipment malfunctions. And
that’s because of disruptions to an otherwise
satisfactory condition.

To solve this, they proposed improvements to the

maintenance schedule, such as extending the time
between repairs, identifying components that need
to be included or excluded in a particular
maintenance event, better allocating and
scheduling maintenance staB, and developing
clearer, more concise, and unambiguous
documentation.

The `ndings from Waddington’s research have

implications for modern maintenance programs.
To achieve this, three things need to be
understood and applied: 1) you cannot maintain
your way to reliability; 2) more intrusive
maintenance introduces more human errors,
which results in more defects. Careless work habits
cause up to 84% of all defects, which eventually
lead to failures.

Lastly, proper documentation is important. Job

plans and work instructions help manage human
error, reduce variability, and improve safety. By
implementing these recommendations, modern
maintenance programs can achieve more eacient,
cost-eBective, and maximised equipment lifespan.

Now, with that said…

Is your PM program optimised to follow these

principles?

If not, then there’s room for improvement.

If you want to train your team to do LESS

maintenance but still improve your overall
reliability…
If you want to avoid intrusive maintenance tasks so
you introduce less human error…
If you need tools and templates to properly
implement and document your preventive
maintenance process…

Then schedule a call with me.

Let’s discuss how we can train your team in

optimising and developing your preventive
maintenance program.

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