You have a bug, or your project went into difficulties. Or your plant’s production has fallen. There could be one foremost cause or several reasons for the adverse event. There could be a series of events that was started by a root cause. How do you explain the tangled web of events which ended in a negative outcome?
In this blog, we will discuss how you can effectively conduct a root cause analysis to eliminate the problem you’re facing during operations from the core.
What Is Root Cause Analysis?
A Root Cause Analysis is a process for recognizing the underlying principles of an adverse event, to fix the query or stop its re-occurrence.
The root cause is the problem that, had it not happened, the difficulty would not have arisen. Many other factors could be causing further damage to the initial issue, which makes the problem more severe, but these factors didn’t cause the main problem.
Ideally, there are three sorts of causes:
- The root cause is the cause of a problem that happens. If the root cause had not happened, the problem would not have occurred. The root cause can be the primary in a chain of interdependent causes.
- Causal factors contribute to the problem but aren’t the cause the problem occurred in the first place. Causal factors intensify the problem or cause residual issues, but their presence isn’t definitively connected to the query. Interference between causal factors and root causes is usually a significant source of uncertainty.
- Non-causal elements did not help fix the problem.
To conduct a root cause analysis, all underlying problems must be identified and put into three categories. But, how can you determine which issue started the whole downfall in the first place? The answer is simple: root causes analysis.
How to Conduct a Root Cause Analysis
To implement a root cause analysis, there usually 5 steps are followed in a series:
Step 1: Determine and Explain the Problem
A problem has surfaced that needs a resolution. Although it may look like classifying the problem is an irrelevant formality, most difficulties benefit from a careful examination. What happened? What are the symptoms, and how can they be organized and documented? It is remarkable how frequently you manage to look behind at later steps and question the specifics of what happened. Measurements and knowledge are your friends. Also, making conclusions too early in the method is not your companion, as it appears in confirmation preference – i.e. putting too much importance on data that supports your pre-determined outcome.
Step 2: Define Causal Factors
At this step, all of the causal factors are brainstormed with a small value for the connections between them. The essential thing is to get everything on record so that nothing is missed. Some things will end up being charged with non-causal factors. However, this is not a concern at this step. It is more vital not to need an essential link in the series than to review something that doesn’t end up moving part of it.
In different words, everything that occurred before the problem is thoroughly investigated and documented. Furthermore, a stakeholder panel is built from people or companies that have a share in the issue, which includes everyone from the interested parties down to the operators and technicians who will be presenting the answer.
Five ways of getting causal factors are applied:
- Brainstorming
Anything and everything is projected onto a whiteboard or another tracking medium and then pared down to the most powerful ones.
- Document analysis
The detailed documentation, communication, control files, and so forth, can produce causal factors that were not accessible otherwise.
- Facilitated workshops
Stakeholders are taken concurrently in any formal form connection down to coffee consultation to explain how the difficulty affects them.
- Interviews
Stakeholders are explained in a one-to-one form to obtain their penetration.
- Observation
The business rules are observed, and insights are derived from seeing people do their work.
Step 3: Determine the Connections among Causal Factors
Once all of the causal factors are listed and documented, the connections between them are set. Some factors will be the condition of others, which will, in turn, be the cause of others. A chain-link of events is created, which shows which events occurred because of other activities.
If there is just one factor that created the problem with no other factor behind it then it holds the single point in its projection of the diagram, but any problems that are affected by other events become a link.
Step 4: Determine the Root Cause
Once the fishbone diagram is finished, the root cause is determined as the arm that would have reduced the problem had it not happened. Each of the others is a causal factor that may have made the difficulty more severe but did not start it.
It is likely to have two or more root causes, but more than two should be actively avoided because it is unlikely that multiple underlying events can play an existential role in a problem. There should be only a definite root cause, two in exceptional cases.
Step 5: Execute a Solution
Although this section is about obtaining the root cause of the problem, completing the answer is the last step in the method. Healthy judgment-making and performance skills are supreme, and information can be the key to stakeholder approval of the decision.
In a plane crash, which is the final form of root cause analysis, all of these actions can be understood very precisely. Firstly, every piece of data is painstakingly detailed and described.
Secondly, every causal factor is brainstormed from all possible views and dug down into continuous “why’s” until no more connections in the series exist. Then the causal factors are examined to determine which one is the root without which the clash wouldn’t have occurred.
There are nearly always many other causal factors that have been provided, but are necessarily noise – without them, the problem still would have occurred. The study will suggest improvements in both the root problem as well as the causal factors.
To learn about more concepts and techniques that can help improve delivery, you should consider pursuing our quality management certifications that cover advanced courses in topics like Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma.
Some of the popular quality management certifications that individuals and enterprise teams can take up are:
Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Training
