Root Cause Analysis Tips – It all starts with a good SnapCharT®

It is almost here – the 2012 Global TapRooT® Summit.

As you have probably heard, on the two days before the summit we have special pre-summit courses we only teach publicly at the summit (we can do any of them onsite).  The course I teach is called the Advanced TapRooT® techniques course.  In this course, we cover best practices for each of the steps of our seven-step process.  A big focus of the course is identifying causal factors, and I will give you some insight into some of that in the root cause tips on February 15.  Today I wanted to talk about something from the course that is extremely important.  Take a look at this analogy:   

Have you ever wondered why sometimes you do an investigation, things get better, but there are still some of the same problems present – maybe they are not as frequent or serious, but they still occur.  Why is that?  A great deal of the time, I would say because you found some of the causal factors and their root causes, but you may have missed one.  In order to make sure problems do not reoccur, you have to find ALL of the causal factors, and therefore, all of the root causes.  And it all starts with a good SnapCharT®.  You see, it is much easier to find the causal factors if your chart is very clear, is not missing important details, and is well worded.  Most of the time you spend in your investigation should be on this front end of the process – the investment in collecting good information and assembling it on your chart will make finding the causal factors easier, and taking them through the Root Cause Tree® faster.

Hopefully this discussion helps.  If you want to hear more, consider joining us in Las Vegas for the course.  And stay for the summit.

Thanks for visiting the blog and happy investigating.