Improvement: Short-Term Gain … Long-Term Commitment

Failure to Invest in the Long-Term

I was reading an article that suggested companies don’t invest in accurate, advanced root cause analysis because they have stopped investing in long-term gains. They implement simple systems that don’t address the real root causes because they don’t believe they will see results quickly from investing in advanced root cause analysis. They are only thinking about the next quarter, or perhaps the next year. They are nearsighted and focus only on short-term gains.

I don’t know if this short-term focus is true, but I know advanced root cause analysis can lead to short-term and long-term gains. This article provides several examples from TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis Users that show how investing in advanced root cause analysis training and software can yield immediate results. Often, the investment can pay for itself in less than 12 months.

However, the initial investment is not the only requirement. To have continued return on investment (long-term gains) requires long-term commitment to keep people qualified and corrective action implementation on track.

Short-Term Gain – Chemical Company Saves $40 Million in 2 Years

A chemical company had frequent upsets that caused it to lose a large fraction of its production. This made the site unprofitable. “Experts” had looked at the issue, and corrective actions had not worked. The plant manager formed a team that included an engineer, a maintenance mechanic, and two operators to try one last attempt to solve the problem. He sent them to a TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis Course. They knew if this effort failed, the plant would be shut down.

They attended the course, then went back to work to apply what they learned. They performed a root cause analysis of each reactor trip. Using the root cause information from the TapRooT® System, they developed solid corrective actions for each problem. We also collected statistics (a rolling three-month average) on shutdown causes, examined the Generic (systemic) Causes for the top three, and developed additional systemic corrective actions.

The result? In less than 12 months, they saw dramatic improvement. The reduction in shutdowns and the increased capacity resulted in an estimated $40 million savings in the first two years. They estimate this investment in training, investigations, and corrective actions yielded a 4000% return on investment and prevented the plant from closing.

Here is a LINK to the whole success story.

Short-Term Gain – $1 Million Saved During the RCA Training

One of the students in a 5-Day TapRooT® Advanced Root Cause Team Leader Course came up to me on the third day and told me the course had already paid for itself many times over.

I asked him what he meant. He said that while we were teaching that morning, he used what he had learned in the course to spot a problem in some engineering work they were doing. He immediately called his office, and they fixed the problem. The change saved over $1 million dollars.

That’s a great return on investment. A $2500 course and a $1,000,000 payback. That’s a 40,000% return on their training investment before the course was even over.

Short-Term Gain – Reduced Workers’ Comp Costs Pay for Training

A mining company implemented the TapRooT® System to improve safety. In the first year, the injury rate was reduced by 35%, and by over 50% by the end of the second year.

They did this by training 50 people (including frontline Supervisors, Superintendents, Safety Specialists, and four Chief Shop Stewards from the union who serve as Safety Committee Chairmen) in a 2-Day TapRooT® RCA Course. We also held a four-hour overview class for upper management, including the Vice President of Operations. The company applied the advanced TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis System to analyze the root causes of OSHA/MSHA recordable injuries and significant near-misses (precursor incidents). 

These improvement efforts significantly reduced the site’s workers’ compensation premiums, more than covering the cost of the training.

See a video about this success story here…

To see the many other TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis Success Stories, CLICK HERE.

Long-Term Commitment

Maintaining these types of gains isn’t free. It requires a long-term commitment by management to support continued improvement – constant attention to examining performance and maintaining a focus on excellence.

As Admiral Rickover said:

Nothing was final – that was the hardest lesson to learn. 
Men do not stay trained. No matter how firm or how formally 
procedures were promulgated, the insidious and subtle 
process of erosion sets in at once.

Only the Commanding Officer can stop the process. 

Take the matter of formality – giving and acknowledging 
commands and reporting data in exact prescribed terms. 
Inevitably, men became slack and took to slang or private jargon. 
Misunderstanding was bound to occur, and accidents had 
no better breeding ground than the haze of confusion. 

What does the required management support look like?

• Provide the resources needed to continue investigating precursor incidents and the budget to implement future improvements (corrective actions).
• Keeping new employees trained in the techniques and providing continuing training to experienced employees.
• Supporting continued improvement by having employees and management get new improvement ideas by attending the Global TapRooT® Summit.
• Resisting the urge to stop paying attention to precursor incidents by cutting investigations and training to achieve short-term cost-cutting.
• Auditing past improvements to make sure they are still being used.

This long-term commitment continues to provide long-term returns on the investment.

What Short-Term/Long-Term ROI Should You Expect?

It’s hard to predict the short- and long-term ROI your company will achieve. To estimate the impact, you need to know the challenges your company faces and your implementation strategy. However, we do know that the advanced root cause knowledge you will learn in a TapRooT® Course will be worthwhile. Which is why we can provide the following GUARANTEE:

Attend TapRooT® Training. Go back to work and use what you have learned to analyze accidents, precursor incidents, equipment failures, operating issues, or quality problems. If you don’t find root causes that you previously would have overlooked, and if you and your management don’t agree that the corrective actions that you recommend are much more effective, just return your course materials, and we will refund the entire course fee.

With this guarantee, you should feel confident you’ll succeed in improving performance and realize a positive return on your investment.

More Information About TapRooT® Training

CLICK HERE to get more information about our 2-Day TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis Training, our 5-Day Advanced Root Cause Analysis Team Leader Training, and our 3-Day Virtual Equifactor Equipment Troubleshooting and TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis Training.

CLICK HERE to see the dates and locations of our upcoming public TapRooT® RCA Courses.

And CLICK HERE to learn more about the upcoming Global TapRooT® Summit and the special pre-Summit Courses.

Don’t wait. You need to start now to achieve your short-term and long-term return on investment