Described herein are improvements for characterizing performance of a component in an automated industrial process. In one example, a method includes, for each period of a plurality of periods, at least until an alert is triggered, updating a count of failed operations attempted by the first component and a percentage of a count of total operations attempted by the first component represented by the count of failed operations. The method further includes decrementing a trigger value when the count of failed operations does not increase for the period and incrementing the trigger value when the count of failed operations increases for the period. Also, the method includes triggering the alert in response to the trigger value satisfying a trigger value criterion and either the count of failed operations satisfying a count criterion or the percentage satisfying a percentage criterion.