Customize Consent Preferences

We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.

The cookies that are categorized as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ... 

Always Active

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

No cookies to display.

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

No cookies to display.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

No cookies to display.

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

No cookies to display.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

No cookies to display.

March 18, 2014 | Mark Paradies

Root Cause Analysis Tip: Performance Tells You If Your Root Cause Analysis is Adequate

At a meeting people were benchmarking their root cause analysis efforts. Several declared their root cause analysis systems adequate because they “thought” the reports found root causes. 

That got me thinking? “How did they know?”

They hadn’t performed a separate investigation. They only reviewed what was presented. And most of the time the people were reviewing the results of a 5-Why investigation (notoriously inconsistent).

So I asked myself how I would judge the adequacy of a root cause analysis. My answer seemed simple: RESULTS! If a company’s root cause analysis efforts are adequate, they won’t have repeat fatalities. They won’t have repeat near-misses of fatalities or serious injuries. They won’t have repeat quality issues. They won’t have to perform corrective maintenance for the same serious mechanical failure. If they are a hospital, they won’t have repeat sentinel events or near-misses of sentinel events.

If they have adequate root cause analysis, problems will be solved once and for all. If they have repeat problems, there is something wrong with their root cause analysis and/or corrective actions.

And since most incidents are repeat incidents at most facilities, the investigation is not only missing the root cause of the incident, but also, the root cause of why previous incidents failed to solve the problem.

But here’s the real answer … We all probably need to improve our root cause analysis and corrective action systems!

Even if we get good (adequate) results, we may be able to get BETTER RESULTS MORE EFFICIENTLY.

Where can you get ideas to improve your root cause analysis system and your corrective action program? At the 2014 Global TapRooT® Summit coming up on April 7-11. Don’t miss this chance to make your root cause analysis system produce results that are even better than adequate. See:

http://www.taproot.com/taproot-summit

Categories
Root Cause Analysis
-->
Show Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *