One of the commonly used root cause analysis tools is two-year-old approach. People keep asking why at least five times, refer to the above image for an example.
There’s another tool that’s similar to the five why approach and that sometimes called variation breakdown and all it does is like five whys, keeps asking what influences this or why does this happen.
But it does not make the assumption that it’s always just one cause.
So one question is… What might affect the amount of time that it takes me to get to work, in the morning. It might choose different routes… refer to the following example:
- I might have the scenic route or
- The freeway route or
- I might prefer the route past the coffee shop.
Certainly the level of traffic on the road is gonna make a difference. How early we’ll leave is going to make a difference and I might choose different
modes of transportation model affect how long it takes me to to get to work.
Another tool that’s very useful is the Pareto Analysis, for finding where, when and by whom defects were made that’s a really good simple root cause analysis tool.