Root Cause Analysis: Do You Use it More Reactively or Proactively?

What is Reactive and Proactive?

Reactive improvement is the response to a precursor incident, quality problem, equipment failure, operational issue, or accident: conducting a root cause analysis and implementing corrective actions to prevent the problem from happening again.

Proactive improvement is applying tools (including root cause analysis) BEFORE an accident, quality problem, equipment failure, operational issue, or other incident occurs to prevent it.

How do you apply root cause analysis reactively or proactively? Read on to find out.

Using Root Cause Analysis Reactively

Have you ever performed a root cause analysis of an accident? If you used TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis to perform your investigation, you know how to use root cause analysis reactively.

If you have never used TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis, CLICK HERE to see an example of using TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis to analyze an environmental incident. Then register for a TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis Course to learn what advanced root cause analysis is all about. HERE are the dates and locations of upcoming public training.

Using Root Cause Analysis Proactively

What is the biggest difference in using root cause analysis proactively rather than reactively? The biggest difference is that an accident, incident, equipment failure, quality problem, or operational issue hasn’t happened yet, and thus hasn’t revealed where you have a problem.

Therefore, you will look for potential problems using audits, assessments, observations, Gemba Walks, Learning Teams, or other tools. These problems often involve a process.

Once you spot a problem (or a potential problem), you can use root cause analysis to map out the process, analyze the problem, and find and fix the problem’s root causes BEFORE a serious incident occurs.

Here is a TapRooT® User at the 2018 TapRooT® Summit explaining how they use TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis proactively in an audit to improve performance (finding problems that they otherwise might have missed).

HERE is an article about the book, TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis for Audits and Proactive Improvement.

HERE is a Success Story about a hospital that applied TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis proactively to prevent sentinel events.

HERE is an article about using a TapRooT® Tool – Equifactor® Troubleshooting – to proactively improve equipment performance.

Finally, HERE is an article by Barb Carr about becoming more proactive.

Where is Your Company?

Where is your company? More reactive or proactive? Where would you like to be?

I’m certain that I don’t like being reactive. I would much rather be proactive in my root cause analysis. Isn’t 2026 the time to put more effort into proactive improvement?

What should you be doing to become more proactive? Call us at 865-539-2139 to discuss your plans, and our TapRooT® Implementation Advisors would be happy to hear your ideas and share best practices that they have learned over the years.