In today’s industrial landscape, the imperative of fault warning for equipment and systems underscores its critical significance in research. The deployment of fault warning systems not only facilitates the early detection and identification of potential equipment failures, minimizing downtime and maintenance costs, but also bolsters equipment reliability and safety. However, the intricacies and non-linearity inherent in industrial data often pose challenges to traditional fault warning methods, resulting in diminished performance, especially with complex datasets. To address this challenge, we introduce a pioneering fault warning approach that integrates an enhanced Coati Optimization Algorithm (ICOA) with a Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (Bi-LSTM) network. Our strategy involves a triple approach incorporating chaos mapping, Gaussian walk, and random walk to mitigate the randomness of the initial solution in the conventional Coati Optimization Algorithm (COA). We augment its search capabilities through a dual population strategy, adaptive factors, and a stochastic differential variation strategy. The ICOA is employed for the optimal selection of Bi-LSTM parameters, effectively accomplishing the fault prediction task. Our method harnesses the global search capabilities of the COA and the sophisticated data analysis capabilities of the Bi-LSTM to enhance the accuracy and efficiency of fault warnings. In a practical application to a real-world case of induced draft fan fault warning, our results indicate that our method anticipates faults approximately two hours in advance. Furthermore, in comparison with other advanced methods, namely, the Improved Social Engineering Optimizer Optimized Backpropagation Network (ISEO-BP), the Sparrow Particle Swarm Hybrid Algorithm Optimized Light Gradient Boosting Machine (SSAPSO-LightGBM), and the Improved Butterfly Optimization Algorithm Optimized Bi-LSTM (MSBOA-Bi-LSTM), our proposed approach exhibits distinct advantages and robust prediction effects.