Do You Need To Improve Performance?

Think About Next Year’s Performance Improvement Initiatives

Does your organization need to improve:

• Safety
• Quality
• Process Safety
• Equipment Reliability & Maintenance
• Production Performance
• Operational Excellence
• Root Cause Analysis and Incident Investigations
• Human Performance
• Patient Safety
• CAPA

Then, you should be thinking of your goals and initiatives for 2024.

But where can you get new ideas to take your improvement initiatives to the next level? We will provide several suggestions below…

Performance Improvement Success Stories

Sometimes, you can get ideas from others’ success. Here are links to several TapRooT® User Success Stories that might give you some great ideas…

• Reducing Equipment Failures
• Saving Money By Solving Operating Issues
• Reducing Lost Time Injuries to Zero
• Cutting Workers’ Compensation Costs
• Reducing Mining Accidents
• Improving Root Cause Analysis to Stop Injuries

I hope that those successes gave you some ideas.

To see all the TapRooT® User Success Stories, CLICK HERE.

Past Summit Suggestions for Performance Improvement

Here are samples of some of the best practice sharing that happens at the TapRooT® Summit…

Would you like to learn more? More Success Stories? More best practices? More from industry experts? More from great Keynote Speakers? More about the 11 special pre-Summit Courses? Then, read on for information about the 2024 Global TapRooT® Summit being held from April 29 – May 3 at the Horseshoe Bay Resort near Austin, Texas.

2024 Global TapRooT® Summit – Learning to Improve Performance

In 1993, we decided to sponsor a Summit for people interested in improving performance. We wanted people to learn best practices and new improvement ideas from across indutries and professions. We held the first Summit in 1994 and we have been improving the Summits ever since.

This year’s Summit has

• seven Keynote Speakers,
• seven Best Practice Tracks that include 42 separate sessions that include success stories, lessons learned, and presentations from researchers and industry experts, and
• eleven special pre-Summit Courses.

Alex Paradies will explain how the Summit works and how it will help you improve your improvement efforts by attending the 2024 Global TapRooT® Summit in this video…

Now, keep reading for details about all these learning opportunities that can help you take your improvement programs to the next level.

To download the eight page Summit Brochure, CLICK HERE.

Keynote Speakers

The seven Keynote Speakers are:

Ken Mecklenburg

Betsy Allen-Manning

Erika Armstrong

Mark Paradies

Amy Souders

Alex Paradies

Dan Verlinde

To see an overview of their insightful, educational, inspirational talks, CLICK HERE.

Best Practice Tracks

This year’s Best Practice Tracks were organized by…

That’s seven Best Practice Tracks with nine sessions in each track to help you improve performance of the topics for that track. To see the details about each track, CLICK HERE.

But don’t let the tracks limit your selection of what you want to learn about. You can pick and choose from all the sessions to make your own custom track for learning. To see the complete Summit Schedule, CLICK HERE.

Pre-Summit Courses

Which of the eleven pre-Summit Courses should you attend to learn ways to improve performance at your facility? Read on and pick the one that best fits your needs…

2-Day TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis Training

If you have never attended TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis Training and you are looking for a better way to find and fix the root causes of problems that cause accidents or precursor incidents, this is the course for you. See the complete course outline HERE.

2-Day TapRooT® Advanced Case Study Workshop

If you want to sharpen your TapRooT® Skills by using the TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis Techniques to solve practice examples from various industries, this course is for you. This practice analysis will provide great refresher training.

This is a new course developed by Tim Diggs and Alex Paradies. See the complete course outline HERE.

2-Day Developing Incident Command System – A New Value Proposition Using TapRooT® Tools

Those who serve on emergency response teams need the ability to quickly assess the complexities of the incident, using their sense of hazard awareness to respond with decisive action and direct a cohesive response effort. If these important skills are not deliberately cultivated and drilled, a workplace emergency can quickly become a far more serious situation. In this course, attendees will use the essentials of the 2-Day TapRooT® course and gain the fundamentals of incident command and control, using SnapCharT® to build tabletop drills with the key response components. They will also use the Root Cause Tree® Diagram and Dictionary and Corrective Action Helper® Module to identify opportunities for improvement based on human performance during drills and emergencies. These tools will give first responders, operations personnel, and people in refining, chemical, and industrial settings the tools needed to take charge and direct their team members to effectively address various aspects of an emergency.

This is a new course developed and taught by Joel Solomon. See the complete course outline HERE.

2-Day Effective Communication Certification

This course is designed for safety professionals to engage more effectively in interpersonal communication/dialogue for incidents, accidents, and investigative occurrences. It incorporates soft skill techniques to improve content acquisition, listening, responding, adapting, and confirming one-on-one and in-group communication situations. The course includes multiple break-out group activities, real-world role play, and continual interactive demonstrations to ensure a smoother transition when applying these communication skills to on-the-job applications.

The course was developed and is taught by Vincent I. Phipps, one of our most highly praised Keynote Speakers at prior TapRooT® Summits. Don’t miss this chance to learn from a communication expert. See the complete course outline HERE.

2-Day Measurement, Trending, and Predictive Analytics: How the Best Use Data Every Day to Improve Work

Kevin McManus developed and teaches this special course to learn how to develop performance measures and trend them to improve performance.

Decades of experimentation, research, and application are captured in the measurement system best practices and strategies Kevin shares in this workshop. This workshop teaches you how to define better measures for any type of work or personal process. It gives you best practice tactics to help you more effectively use the data you capture every day to optimize work process performance. Lastly, it looks at how emerging technologies can help you ‘level up’ your potential for proactive process performance analysis and improvement.

The tested and proven measurement work system designs we share in this workshop will help you significantly improve how you measure, analyze, and improve daily work. Each participant leaves with an action plan for improving their process measurement and analysis processes and a preliminary set of vital signs for those key processes they are responsible for improving.

This course was updated and improved for this year’s Summit. See the complete course outline HERE.

2-Day Equifactor® Equipment Troubleshooting & TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis Training

Equifactor® Troubleshooting Techniques are based on the work of the late equipment reliability expert Heinz Bloch and capture how Best-in-Class Performing organizations think differently about their equipment and systems.

In two days, you will learn:

• How to use Equifactor® Troubleshooting Tables to fix equipment failures
• Going beyond troubleshooting to find the real, fixable root causes of failures
• Maintenance and operational best practices
• Holistic, proactive system reliability techniques to ELIMINATE the reasons (plural) equipment failures occur

The tools you will learn include:

• Equifactor® Troubleshooting Tables – a systematic guide to troubleshooting common equipment problems.  Don’t guess – prove!
• Troubleshooting Strategy – don’t lose the data! Develop a troubleshooting plan to capture all failure symptoms and possible causes.
• Failure Modes/Failure Agents – there are only four ways a physical component can fail. Don’t FRETT, build the equipment failure narrative (hint, it’s never just a single-point failure)
• Custom Tables ­– The best use of Equifactor®!  If there are no tables, build them, capture the wisdom of your machine experts, build the perfect training document for new equipment troubleshooters, and cut the troubleshooting turnarounds in way less than half by structuring it.
• Proactive Improvement – True solutions are always proactive, even if they’re motivated by failure.  If you truly fix a problem, failures don’t recur!
• Change Analysis – “It was working, and now it isn’t” or “The other machines are working. What’s different about this one?” Change analysis structures the intuitive but messy process of comparing machine failures to past performance or similar equipment.
• Root Cause Tree® Diagram – How to find the root causes of equipment failures, including those caused by human performance.
• Developing Effective Fixes – Using the Corrective Action Helper® Guide to develop more effective fixes for the root causes you discover.

Equifactor® Troubleshooting is for maintenance technicians, equipment reliability specialists, maintenance managers, and non-equipment expert investigators. Develop best-in-class performance by asking best-in-class questions.

Justin Clark will be teaching this class. See the complete course outline HERE.

Effective Interviewing and Evidence Collection

Barb Carr developed and will teach this class, which is based on the TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis System and ASTM International Standards – a solid foundation for this evidence-collection training. Attendees will:

• Learn how to preplan and prepare to document investigations with ease.
• Use a SnapCharT® efficiently as a planning tool for evidence collection.
• Work in teams using a systematic process to collect information,
• Learn how to best label, collect, and record evidence.
• Learn how to conduct an initial site visit.
• Participate in mock interviews practicing the TapRooT® 12-Step Interview Process.

See the complete course outline HERE.

Stopping Human Error

This course, developed by Mark Paradies and Alex Paradies, will help you understand:

• The causes of human error
• Human factors design best practices
• Methods to find error-likely situations
• Techniques to help supervisors and workers prevent human errors
• CHAP (Critical Human Action Profile)
• Human Performance Improvement Technology
• Designing your human performance improvement program.

With the exercises built-in to try the techniques, this is an active, quick-moving, 2-day course that will help you develop a customized, effective, efficient program to improve human performance at your facility.

See the complete course outline HERE.

TapRooT® Software

Every year, this course evolves to cover the latest improvements in the TapRooT® Software. The course is designed for TapRooT® Software Power Users and Administrators to help them take advantage of all the features built into the TapRooT® Software, including features of the latest release.

You need to learn how to:

• Create your own Custom Tabs, fields, and pick lists.
• Design and build your own reports.
• Select Global preferences for your company, including Language options.
• Select SnapCharT® preferences for yourself.
• Use Optional investigation techniques.
• Use the TapRooT® App to make investigations more efficient.

Dan Verlinde, Chief Technology Officer, and Angie Comer, Software Project Manager, will teach an intensive review of the TapRooT^® VI Software. Whether you are a System Administrator or a power TapRooT® User, you will learn all the capabilities built into this amazing software. Don’t get just 10-20% from your software investment. Learn the full power of your TapRooT^®Software!

See Dan discuss the course here…

2-Day Auditing & Proactive Improvement Using TapRooT® RCA

Marcus Miller and Nancy Hitchins developed and will teach the Audits & Proactive Improvement Using TapRooT® Course. This course helps people understand how to use advanced root cause analysis tools to develop their audit protocols and use the human performance and equipment reliability knowledge built into the TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis System to understand the root causes of conditions adverse to quality including non-conformities and non-compliance issues.

Applying TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis proactively when auditing can help your company avoid quality issues, incidents, equipment failures, and accidents by being more effective in your audit processes. See the complete course outline HERE.

2-Day Risk Assessment and Risk Management Best Practices

Australian risk expert Jim Whiting develops and teaches this course, which evolves every year to include the latest risk assessment and risk management best practices. These best practices include:

• An interactive WORD template that takes the user through the risk assessment process and, when completed, serves as a diligent entry to your Risk Register;
• Risk & Opportunity-Based Thinking (ROBT)
• Risk & Opportunity Conversations (ROC Talk) evolved from BBS
• Explanation of new Standards – 31073, 45001, 31010, 31000
• New neuroscience-based explanations of the variability of individual’s risk perceptions and risk-taking and
• Participants receive a USB stick of approx. 2 GB of ALL course handouts, copies of ALL slides, useful reference materials, and sample PPTX & PDF files accumulated and developed by Jim Whiting over the last 30+ years of Risk Management consultancy and training.

See the complete course outline HERE.

REGISTER HERE

Register for the pre-Summit Course of your choice and the Summit by CLICKING HERE.

Don’t wait. Pre-Summit Course seats are limited, and you need this information to make your improvement program world-class.