Efficient Plant May 2021 - 6

column | implementations

Root Cause
Elimination
Is a Winning
Mindset
Dr. Klaus M. Blache
Univ. of Tennessee Reliability
and Maintainability Center
(RMC)

An effective root-cause problem-elimination
approach reduces personnel injuries, minimizes rework and scrap, increases uptime and
competitiveness, and cuts costs.

+

NEW ROOT CAUSE
ANALYSIS COURSE
The next RCA course offered by the
UT-RMC is June 15 to 17, 2021, at the
Nissan (Smyrna, TN) Training Center
(see inside back cover of this issue).

6

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HE ASQ (American Society for
Quality, Milwaukee, WI, asq.org),
says, " A root cause is defined as
a factor that caused a nonconformance
and should be permanently eliminated
through process improvement. The root
cause is the core issue-the highest-level
cause-that sets in motion the entire
cause-and-effect reaction that ultimately
leads to the problem(s). Root cause
analysis (RCA) is a collective term that
describes a wide range of approaches,
tools, and techniques used to uncover causes of problems. Some RCA
approaches are geared more toward
identifying true root causes than others,
some are more general problem-solving techniques, and others simply offer
support for the core activity of root-cause
analysis. "
A root cause is anything that mitigated
a nonconformance that should be permanently eliminated. Otherwise, over time,
you end up fixing the same things. Reasons
to do root-cause problem elimination
include reducing personnel injuries, minimizing rework or scrap, increasing uptime
and competitiveness, and cutting costs.
Problems you observe are often the
symptoms. With investigation you find that
it was really a process or program failure,
organizational failure, lack of training, or
poorly written work instructions. It's more
about what physically happened to the
asset, human-factor-related errors, unclear
standard practices driving variation,
deficient accepted daily practices, and
plant-floor culture.
When assessing a facility's level of
maturity and organizational health, I ask
questions including :
	 Do you have standardized work and is
it being followed?
	 Do you have individual/small team

continuous-process improvement and is it
working?
	 Do you have a methodology to improve
and sustain the thinking process to one of
ongoing improvement and is it working?
For the first two questions, I usually get
a positive nod or a yes. When I emphasize
the third question, there is hesitation and
explanation of areas in which they are still
trying to implement and/or correct weaknesses. From my observation, an informal
RCA process has limited accountability,
especially in follow-up, that assures corrective actions have a measurable positive
impact. It typically has no mechanism for
sharing ideas or documenting what has
been learned. A common practical problem-solving/elimination process is needed
to get the entire facility to use the same
" thinking process. " Your RCA strategy
should envision an entire facility full of
problem eliminators.
Many places that use some RCA are
typically doing the basic 5 Whys, histograms, and Pareto charts. There are many
other tools, including correlation and
scatter plots, Fishbone (cause & effect)
diagram, barrier analysis, cause mapping,
logic tree, fault tree, process mapping,
and 8D (eight disciplines problem solving
developed at Ford Motor Co.).
Learn several tools well and understand
when to use any of the 15-plus key RCA
tools and techniques. Grasping a continuous-improvement mindset benefits all
parts of an organization. EP

Based in Knoxville, Dr. Klaus M.
Blache is director of the Reliability &
Maintainability Center at the Univ. of
Tennessee, and a research professor
in the College of Engineering. Contact
him at kblache@utk.edu.

MAY 2021

4/26/21 9:29 AM
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Efficient Plant May 2021

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