Root Cause Analysis System for Problem Solving
and Problem Avoidance If you wake up everyday and your day performs to your plan, meeting all your expectations, nothing you do is less than successful; you never have an error, a mistake, a defect or scrap; stop reading this article right now! However, perhaps you are like the rest of us who does occasionally have a less than perfect day, with the infrequent error, mistake, or problem, and these issues are costing you money. If these less than perfect issues are creeping up in your home life or at work, I have the solution. What I have done is created a Root Cause Analysis System for problem solving and problem avoidance that can be taught to anyone, anywhere, anytime. Problem solving and problem avoidance is the responsibility of everyone breathing in close proximity to you, from the CEO, to the floor sweeper, to family and friends. My system is a cultural change that directly affects your environment and allows you to recognize how you can better solve your own less-than-perfect situation quickly and efficiently. Root Cause Analysis System is designed to change the old deep-rooted culture that accepts problems as part of the norm. Face it, we even budget in anticipation for problems. The transformations of a wasteful old culture which reacts to problems to a new culture that solves the problem before it becomes a problem; I call this problem avoidance social training. Imagine the success of whatever you do for a living, or simply living and having the wisdom to avoid problems. If you had a better problem solving and avoidance process, you would be able to place money back into your business, or your home, buy a boat, and significantly reduce the cost to live and spend your unwasted resources anywhere you desire. What you learn from the Root Cause Analysis System is in two parts; the first, the fundamental elements for identifying the root cause of a problem and applying appropriate actions to prevent the recurrence of the problem or failure. Second, imagine if you were able to recognize the warning signs or symptoms of a problem and solve it before it became problem. The Root Cause Analysis System gives you the ultimate power to develop this skill. Avoiding problems is what you learn and this becomes your new culture. We all have the capability to be problem solvers, and many of you have made a career from it. The real cost savings comes from becoming a problem anticipator, thus avoiding the problems altogether and spending your resources doing what you do best! How many times have you been told that failure builds character? I would rather have less character, less failures and keep more of my money. Unfortunately, sometimes things fail and a fundamental failure of a process happens and can be a sum of many processes combined into one result. Historically, your effort or function has performed without a flaw, and then something called process variability finds its way into your function. Unwanted variability worms its way into our lives and we find ourselves scrambling to make schedule, satisfying our boss, or desperately trying to make delivery and struggling to be competitive. Story-time: My front right tire on my new auto became flat because a roofing nail became imbedded in it. Ok, that happens. My first pass at conducting root cause analysis led to the nail being the root cause of the tire failure. However, it was not, because the box that held the nails had failed, so our second guess was that the failed box caused the tire failure. It was not the root cause, you see the roof leaked during a rainstorm, the box got wet, and the cardboard box collapsed because of the weight of the nails. The fundamental failure was caused by the leaky roof, and until we eliminated that condition, we would continue to witness some sort of failure. This course is a transformation of the culture so you can avoid the failure all together. Historically, all operation budgets have had an extra 15 to 25 percent to pay for failures, rejection, over work, waste, and the human resources to process it. Transforming a culture to recognize the variability as it occurs is what I teach. The person nearest to the problem will already understand the solution and may already be familiar with or experiencing difficulty in the process and making adjustments in the process to make it work. This shift or adjustment in the process that never becomes documented and usually dies with that person performing that shift is called hidden factor. Someone may have noticed the change in the process, did not think it was important or this change was so gradual that it seemed insignificant until a failure or problem was observed. Variability or change should have become your red flag to start the easy investigation. However, our current culture is taught to march forward and hope for the best. Our current culture is trained to accept failure; rework has become the norm. Even simple SPC (statistical process control) is a reactive process and not until you have collected enough data can you attempt a traditional root cause analysis, a point where in time you have already witnessed unnecessary cost due to a less than perfect circumstance. Here is a story that relates to customer satisfaction. Customer perception is a very difficult thing to measure until their perception of you is so poor they stop buying your products or using your services or drinking your milk. This also can happen with your children. My oldest son drank sour milk on two separate occasions. To this day, he will not drink milk. Root cause seems simple enough; my wife always saves the sour milk for baking; she even labeled the container sour. At this particular time in Daniel's life, he was only three years old and he had not learned to read yet. He's eleven years old today and he still won't drink milk. What happens if one of your sour milks escaped to your customer? Your customer may not want to drink your milk again and find something else to quench their thirst. For this important reason, problem avoidance social training becomes an essential necessity for you! Let's talk a little about why you would want to learn Root Cause Analysis System for Problem Solving and Problem Avoidance in the first place? It is a proven fact that most of the failures and problems that plague industry are what we would call CHRONIC. This means that they happen more than once for the same reason. Furthermore, out of all of the CHRONIC failures that you experience in a given year, 20 percent of those failures represent 80 percent of the loss. These are important facts to understand when you think about the benefits of Root Cause Analysis System for Problem Solving and Problem Avoidance. It means that if you investigate the 20 percent of the failures representing 80 percent of your losses, you will reap quantum benefits in a short period. Read this last paragraph to your CFO and watch the enthusiasm grow. I recently spoke with a manufacturing manager who had to scrap 300 parts. I asked him if they had identified the root cause. He said "no," the problem went away on its own. Problems never go away unless you clearly identify the fundamental root cause and remove it from the process. The benefits of the Root Cause Analysis System for Problem Solving and Problem Avoidance is that we teach you to better understand the variability, and the Root Cause Analysis System obtains its energy from people. Once you understand the variability, the solution, and the process improvement, mistake proofing is around the corner. Getting around that corner is why we are here to create a mindset that looks for change, variability in a process, and raises the flag so that we don't experience the grief at the end of the process where it is most costly to us. Creating this working environment that understands the warning signs without stopping our process has to be instilled in every person, every employee, as part of their reality and part of their job. To find the fault or failure at the end of a process, when your resources have been spent, is too late and too costly! However, it is never too late to learn to avoid the sour milk and to become a member of the problem avoidance society, a culture driven by change and fueled by energized people!
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