Failure to Learn – What Does It Cost?

Cost of Poor Investigations, Bad Root Cause Analysis, and Ineffective Corrective Actions

I’ve written about the cost of bad root cause analysis and poor corrective actions before (THIS LINK and THIS LINK). But I thought I’d share some recent examples of the cost of failure to learn (either by poor investigations, bad root cause analysis, or ineffective corrective actions).

EXAMPLE 1: The US Navy may be unable to meet operational commitments due to cost and schedule overruns on the Colombia-class submarines. $2.6 billion was spent to achieve on-time, on-budget results for this construction project, but the GAO reports that it is unclear whether this investment has produced the desired results. The ineffective corrective actions may cost hundreds of millions of dollars more and cause additional delays. The GAO says that past cost and schedule overruns were not always investigated effectively. (For more information, CLICK HERE.)

Here’s a video that reports on the cost overruns…

EXAMPLE 2: The two crashes of Boeing 737 Max aircraft resulted in 346 people being killed. Also, the resulting construction delays, regulatory action, and lost sales cost Boeing over $20 billion. These problems could have been detected early and prevented with effective root cause analysis and corrective actions. (For more information, CLICK HERE.)

Here’s a report from The Wall Street Journal…

EXAMPLE 3: Honeywell had a backlogged replacement of a reboiler shell that was discovered during an inspection. The failure, which occurred due to the failure to replace the shell, resulted in $4 million in property damage, as well as the cost of replacing the reboiler.

For the CSB report on this accident, click on the image below…

EXAMPLE 4: We have written about the results of medical errors (sentinel events and medication errors) and the failure to improve performance in the past (see THIS LINK, THIS LINK, and THIS LINK for just three examples). But what do these failures cost? The WHO (World Health Organization) estimates that it may cost $42 million each year worldwide. The NIH reports estimates of $ 20 billion for medical errors, or $37.7 to $ 46 billion per year, just for hospital-acquired infections. Estimates are that over 400,000 people are harmed each year, with as many as 200,000 being killed by medical errors. These statistics aren’t improving, indicating that past root cause analysis and corrective action efforts have not been effective.

So what is the annual cost of poor investigations, inadequate root cause analysis, and ineffective corrective actions? Over $100 billion? Over $1 trillion? Nobody really knows. But an investment in effective, advanced root cause analysis has been proven to have a significant return on investment by many TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis Users (See two particular examples HERE and HERE and all of our success stories HERE).

How to Learn Effective Root Cause Analysis

The most amazing thing to realize is that effective root cause analysis is easy to learn and apply. Our 5-Day Advanced TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis Team Leader Training is held around the world (see upcoming public courses HERE). Or you could hold a TapRooT® RCA Course at your site. CLICK HERE to contact us for more information.

We would be pleased to hold an Executive Briefing for your senior management team to demonstrate how TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis works and how easy the patented, cloud-based TapRooT® Software is to use.

Don’t wait! The deaths, significant injuries, and costs that you can avoid by applying advanced root cause analysis are really worth the effort.