Root Cause Analysis Masterclass: Become a Pro

Root Cause Analysis (RCA), or Root Cause Failure Analysis (RCFA) as it is sometimes called, is a step-by-step methodology that leads to the discovery of the prime cause (or the root cause) of the failure. If the root cause of a failure is not addressed in a timely fashion, the failure will repeat itself, usually causing unnecessary loss of production and increasing the cost of maintenance. RCA is a structured way to arrive at the root cause, thus facilitating the elimination of the cause and not just symptoms associated with it. Repeat problems can be experienced in everyday life. If you compare a manufacturing process to a garden, the process problems would be the weeds in the garden. If you pull up a dandelion and don’t get the entire root it will just keep popping back up. It is much the same with manufacturing problems – if you don’t get to the root cause of the problem, it is eventually (if not frequently) going to re-occur. The goal of a Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is to get down to the true cause of the problem, the root cause. This training trains you to look into the roots rather than looking into symptoms. Several studies by many organizations have repeatedly proven that 90% of the time unwanted situations caused by failures are related to process problems; only about 10% are related to personnel problems. Yet, most organizations spend far more time looking for culprits, rather than focusing on finding root causes. Because of this misdirected effort, we often miss t