What is a Root Cause Analysis?

A Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is a systematic approach to identify the fundamental causes of a problem, failure or incident. Instead of just addressing the symptoms, RCA focuses on uncovering the underlying reasons for an issue so that it can be permanently resolved and prevented from happening again.

The term RCA refers to a single root cause, but in today’s world you will always find a combination of causes, conditions and failed measures. That’s also the reason that the classical ‘Five Why’s’ methodology is not enough and more comprehensive methods like CoThink Event Mapping are needed.

Why is RCA important?

When facing a problem, jumping to conclusions could be the best approach, but only in the situation that you are 100% sure about your conclusion :-). In all other cases it's better to do an RCA to:

• prevent recurring problems by tackling the root causes, improving preventive measures and improving the conditions to reduce the likelyhood
• improve quality and reliability in processes and operations
• save time and costs by avoiding repeated fixes and downtime
• enhance safety and reduces risks in critical environments

RCA is widely used in industries such as manufacturing, IT, healthcare, aviation, and energy, where failures can have significant consequences.

What is important for a high quality and effective RCA?

It requires a structured approach, the right mindset and collaboration. Key factors that contribute to a successful RCA process are:

• A clear problem definition to ensure alignment on the impact and urgency
• Fact-based investigation to avoid assumptions or opinions. Ask: What happened? instead of Who is to blame? (Focus on processes, not people)
• Attitude: Make Things Visible, ask the right questions….and listen actively
• Systematic RCA techniques like 5Whys and Event Mapping to avoid mistakes in logic like
• Cross-functional expertise to avoid tunnel vision
• A trained and skilled RCA facilitator to guide the team
• Focus on systemic deep-rooted causes to avoid quick fixes that only treat symptoms
• Effective and sustainable solutions to eliminate/control deviations
• Corrective actions & verify effectiveness with the owners to
• A short, concise and visual RCA report with findings, actions and results 
• Share lessons learned towards a culture of continuous improvement and prevention

Many times we get the question about Ishikawa or fishbone diagram. A well known tool for brainstorming and when properly used it can be a great help.

In most RCA cases it creates a lot of unnecessary work, that's why we recommend to focus on gathering the facts and truly understand the problem first.

When you don't know the answer yet or don't know the normal operation of system or process: what information is missing and how do we get that knowledge or data?