Root Cause Theory

If you need to catch up, you can read Part I here.

When you look at a tree, you can't see its roots. In order to do so, you have to dig beneath the surface. RCA is no different; in order to identify a root cause, you'll need to dig a bit. But before you can do that, you have to know what you're trying to accomplish. Today, I want to focus on what RCA is and is not. It's important to understand RCA - its intent and goals - if you're going to benefit from the work.

What Root Cause Analysis Is

The first goal of RCA is learning. When you analyze root cause, your goal is to look beyond the immediate problem and find the situation that's causing the problem. Think of it like the practice of medicine: in RCA, business problems are akin to the symptoms of an illness; they're merely signs of a deeper problem.

The second - but equally important - goal of RCA is eliminating the situation(s) that caused the problem(s) to occur. When you identify, treat and cure the underlying disorder (the root cause), then you cure the symptoms as well. Be sure to keep these goals in mind and in the proper sequence; you can't solve the deeper problem until you find it, so your first goal needs to be finding the disorder that's creating the symptoms.

What Root Cause Analysis Is Not

It can be easy to confuse RCA with problem-solving; after all, at the conclusion of RCA, you do develop CAPA(s). However, problem-solving and RCA - although they share some common threads - are not the same. Problem-solving is a sprint, whereas RCA is more like a marathon. If your order management software fails to generate a shipping label for an order that has to go out today, problem-solving methodology would lead your shipping department to create a label manually. While this solves your immediate problem, it doesn't tell you why the failure occurred (which means it could happen again); only RCA will do that. This doesn't mean that problem-solving isn't important; you need both weapons in your management arsenal.

Fault-finding, finger-pointing, and assigning blame are not among the goals of RCA, although some people do tend to associate RCA with negative consequences. You need to fight this perception; RCA cannot be successful if the people who made the error won't to speak up about what happened (because they're afraid of being punished for making the mistake). RCA is not about being punitive, and until everyone really believes that and acts on that philosophy, you're going to have a hard time getting the full story. True, sometimes managers will have to initiate disciplinary action at the conclusion of RCA; however, you can't know that until you've completed the process - and you can't complete the process if folks are afraid to 'fess up. Furthermore, I'd suggest that if many of your RCAs lead to disciplinary action, then you're probably missing something in your RCA (based both on my experience and Deming's theory that the majority of failures are caused by the business system itself rather than by individual employees).

Tomorrow: the three types of root cause, and how they work together to create problems in the business.