Root Cause Analysis // BRIEF #1

Root Cause Analysis (RCA). Sounds exciting, right? This data-based term comes from thinking about common problems and figuring out how to solve them.

Root Cause Analysis is the process of discovering the root causes of problems in order to identify appropriate solutions. it is much more effective to systematically prevent and solve underlying issues rather than just treating ad hoc symptoms and putting out fires It’s an essential problem-solving method used to isolate and identify concerns. Looking beyond superficial cause and effect, RCA can show where processes or systems failed or caused an issue in the first place.?

RCA analyzes and identifies multiple types of root causes. There are three common types that can cause failures:??

? Physical Causes: A physical cause is when a tangible item fails. For example, if an MRI machine at a hospital stops working and prevents a patient from receiving the proper health care, this is a physical root cause.??

? Human Causes: This type of root cause occurs when one person or several team members do something incorrectly. Human error will often lead to a physical cause, e.g., a hospital’s quality management team didn’t perform an MRI machine’s scheduled inspection, which caused it to fail.?

? Organizational Causes: An organizational root cause is when a system or process that an organization uses to do its jobs is faulty. For example, if a hospital’s quality control department mistakenly thought it was the patient safety department’s responsibility to inspect the MRI machine and nobody corrected them, this is an organizational root cause.

Core principles

There are a few core principles that guide effective root cause analysis, some of which should already be apparent. Not only will these help the analysis quality, but they will also help the analyst gain trust and buy-in from stakeholders, clients, or patients.

1. Focus on correcting and remedying root causes rather than just symptoms.

2. Don’t ignore the importance of treating symptoms for short-term relief.

3. Realize there can be, and often are, multiple root causes.

4. Focus on HOW and WHY something happened, not WHO was responsible.

5. Be methodical and find concrete cause-effect evidence to back up root cause claims.

6. Provide enough information to inform a corrective course of action.

7. Consider how a root cause can be prevented (or replicated) in the future.

As the above principles illustrate: when we analyze deep issues and causes, it’s important to take a comprehensive and holistic approach. In addition to discovering the root cause, we should strive to provide context and information that will result in an action or a decision. Remember: good analysis is actionable analysis.

Popular Root Cause Analysis Methods?

The goal of RCA is to recognize all the underlying causes of a problem. Using an analysis method is a useful tool to accomplish this task. Some popular root cause analysis methods are:?

The Five Whys: This is a problem-solving strategy that asks “Why did this problem happen?” and then follows the answer up with a series of additional “But why?” questions until you get to the root cause of the problem.?

Change Analysis: This method meticulously examines all the changes leading up to an event in hopes of discovering risk management strategies. This is particularly useful when there are many possible causes.?

Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA): FMEA is one of the first systematic failure analysis methods and is a step-by-step guide for recognizing all potential failures in a product, business process or service. Once you’ve pinpointed each failure in a system, you can then assess the effects of those failures one by one.?

Benefits and goals of root cause analysis

The first goal of root cause analysis is to discover the root cause of a problem or event. The second goal is to fully understand how to fix, compensate, or learn from any underlying issues within the root cause. The third goal is to apply what we know from this analysis to systematically prevent future issues or to repeat successes. The analysis is only as good as what we do with that analysis, so the third goal of RCA is essential. We can use RCA to also modify the core processes and system issues in a way that prevents future problems. Instead of just treating the symptoms of a football player’s concussion, for example, root cause analysis might suggest wearing a helmet to reduce the risk of future concussions. Treating the individual symptoms may feel productive. Solving a large number of problems looks like something is getting done. But if we don’t actually diagnose the real root cause of a problem, we’ll likely have the same exact problem over and over. Instead of a news editor just fixing every single omitted Oxford comma, she will prevent further issues by training her writers to use commas properly in all future assignments.

It's important to mention that, the above-mentioned thoughts have been extracted from two e-source. I read them and was very impressed. That's why I'm sharing it with you:

• Tableau: Root Cause Analysis Explained: Definition, Examples, and Methods
• Sparta Systems: 5 Steps to Performing an Effective Root Cause Analysis