Equipment Failure Investigation Report Template
A short, consistent failure report stops the same breakdown from happening twice. This template covers the event, evidence, root cause, contributing factors and tracked actions, and exports to PDF or Word.
Fill in
Equipment Failure Investigation Report Template
Equipment Failure Investigation Report
Company: Acme Precision Ltd, Plant 2 Report number: EFI-2026-041 Date of failure: 2026-10-12 Asset: Hydraulic press HP-07 Location: Press shop, Line 3 Downtime: 9.5 hours Consequence: Production loss Investigation lead: A. Kumar, Maintenance Engineer
1. Description of the event
The press stopped mid-cycle with a hydraulic pressure fault and an oil leak at the main cylinder gland. Operators isolated the machine and called maintenance.
2. Evidence collected
Photos of the gland, failed seal retained, hydraulic oil sample sent for analysis, controller alarm log, last PM record and operating hours since last seal change.
3. Root cause
Seal wear caused by contaminated oil. The return line filter bypass had been opened during a previous repair and was not reset, so unfiltered oil circulated.
4. Failure timeline
| Time | Event | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Last known good operation | ||
| First sign or alarm | ||
| Failure and stop | ||
| Repair started | ||
| Returned to service |
5. Contributing factors
| Category | Finding | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Design or specification | ||
| Operation | ||
| Maintenance | ||
| Spares and materials | ||
| Environment |
6. Corrective and preventive actions
Replace the seal and flush the system, reset the filter bypass, add an oil cleanliness check to the monthly PM, and add the bypass state to the shift start checklist.
7. Action tracking
| Action | Owner | Due date | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
Approvals
This is a general-purpose starting point. Adapt it to your site procedures, and follow your safety and incident reporting rules where a failure involves injury, environmental release or regulatory notification. Keep the five whys or a fishbone attached as supporting evidence.
Trend failure causes from your ERP history
An optional review of how breakdown notifications and failure codes are captured and reported.
Optional. The tool and every export work without this. No spam.
How to use it
Fill in the asset, date, downtime and consequence, then describe the event, the evidence you secured, the root cause and the actions. The document also includes blank tables for the failure timeline, contributing factors by category and action tracking, which you can complete in the exported file. Print it, attach it to the work order, or save it with the asset history.
- Collect evidence before cleaning up: failed parts, photos, logs and samples.
- State the cause as a mechanism, not a person or a vague phrase like operator error.
- Give every action an owner and a due date.
What a good report contains
The strongest reports separate what happened from why. The event section is factual. The root cause names the underlying condition that, if removed, would stop recurrence, such as a missing filter reset step in a procedure. Contributing factors cover design, operation, maintenance, materials and environment, which prevents the habit of stopping at the first answer. Actions must include a preventive element beyond fixing the part.
Choosing which failures to report
Not every stoppage needs a full report. Set a threshold, for example any failure with safety consequence, downtime above a set number of hours, repeat failure of the same asset, or repair cost over a limit. For smaller events, a five whys on the work order may be enough. A threshold keeps the effort on failures that teach something and avoids paperwork fatigue.
Tying it to your systems
Link the report number to the maintenance work order and the failure code in your ERP or CMMS, such as damage, cause and activity codes in SAP PM notifications. Consistent coding lets you trend failure causes by asset class later, which is where the report pays for itself. Review open actions in a regular reliability meeting until they close.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is this different from a five whys?
Five whys is a technique for finding cause. This report is the record that holds the event, evidence, cause, contributing factors and actions. Attach the five whys or fishbone to it as supporting analysis.
Who should sign the report?
At minimum the investigation lead and the maintenance manager. Add production or safety managers when the failure affected output or people, so actions have an owner outside maintenance too.
How soon should it be completed?
Capture the event and evidence the same day, because evidence disappears quickly. Complete root cause and actions within days to a couple of weeks depending on complexity and lab results.
Can I use it for a safety incident?
Use it for the equipment portion, but follow your site's formal incident investigation and reporting procedures, which may have legal timelines and required formats.
If you want failure codes and reports analyzed across your ERP history, Netray can help summarize recurring causes by asset class. The template is free to use as is.
Related Tools
P-F Interval Inspection Frequency Calculator
Work out how often to inspect so you catch a potential failure before it becomes a functional failure, and what each inspection interval costs.
Maintenance & ReliabilityOptimal PM Interval Calculator (Weibull Cost Model)
Compute the PM interval that minimizes cost per operating hour for a wearing-out component, and see what your current interval costs you each year.
Maintenance & ReliabilityMaintenance Job Plan Labor and Cost Estimate Worksheet
Build a task-level job plan with crew size, hours, rates and parts, and export total man-hours and cost to Excel.
Maintenance & ReliabilityCritical Spare Stockout Risk Calculator (Poisson)
Decide how many slow-moving critical spares to hold by comparing stockout risk and cost for each stock level.
More Maintenance & Reliability tools
See all- Preventive Maintenance Schedule Template
- Maintenance Work Order Template
- Inherent vs Operational Availability Calculator (MTBF, MTTR)
- Spare Parts Criticality Scoring Worksheet
- Maintenance Backlog Calculator (Weeks of Work and Crew Size)
- PM Compliance and Schedule Compliance Calculator
- Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) Worksheet
- Maintenance Cost per Unit Produced Calculator
- Maintenance Crew Size Calculator