Comments on: Root Cause Analysis Example

By: K. Wihardika

K. Wihardika — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 10:28:46 +0000

Every people usually don’t like if someone ask Why over 5 times. In reality the culture of people should change before use of 5 why’s in every of problems. The main problem’s before culture changes is the blame each other during to solve the problem and crass personaly.
So, I think that before asking 5 why’s should change the culture first for smooth result and find the root cause.

Thank’s also for a good learning from this articel for my personal to better life.

By: Mark

Mark — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 00:12:42 +0000

Sorry I’m late to this posting. I thought your site was very enjoyable to read. I especially liked your Google Interview article.

Best Regards,

Mark

By: Mark Graban

Mark Graban — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 01:50:44 +0000

That’s very innovative work that you did, tying call center calls to “root causes.” The book “Lean Solutions” (Womack and Jones) talks about how Fujitsu did this with their call centers, driving root causes all the way back to manufacturing problems.

It’s sad that most call centers try to just “put the fire out” rather than removing causes of fires (as root cause problem solving would do).

The 5 Whys is an incredibly powerful tool. I’ve used it in hospital laboratories with lean projects. For example, the team will say “we need a new coag test instrument.” You ask “why?” and they say “well, it gets gummed up because of the way the blood specimens are stored and loaded” and you end up tracing through to problems that can be solved much more cheaply than buying a new instrument/machine. “Creativity before capital” is the lean mindset. 5 Whys gets you beyond surface problems that you would tend to throw money at.

Thanks for highlighting this, Pete.