Root Cause Analysis

Sometimes, despite the best laid plans for business continuity, something breaks and business is disrupted. While the priority is to get business operations back in working order, it’s often worth taking a moment afterwards to reflect on the cause of the problem. There may be a big difference between the symptoms of the problem (for instance, a production line keeps breaking down); and the real cause (nobody renewed the maintenance and support contract). These two aspects must be distinguished and handled properly. In our example, you’d get the production line working again first, then put a contract in place for regular preventive maintenance. Symptoms are usually obvious. But what’s the best way of finding out the underlying cause? Read more