Understanding Root Cause Analysis with Kevin Stewart
It happens all the time that when certain companies can’t solve a problem, they just move on and overlook it. Sometimes, they successfully solve the problem but it keeps reappearing because they don’t have a proper process for solving that problem. That causes a lot of downtime and costs a lot in the long run. They spare all these resources for solving the problem quickly without even looking for the origin of the problem—the root cause—that they don’t even write the solutions applied in an understandable and applicable way for the next time, the same problem occurs.
This is why root cause analysis is so much worth in problem-solving. RCA is a structured process used to understand the past events with a purpose of preventing recurrence. Even if you plan everything right, schedule your maintenance, and perform preventive maintenance over time, you don’t get effectiveness as you should, after all this hard work put into doing these three major activities. But, if you have a proper process for defect elimination, you will have a great level of improvement in your maintenance planning and scheduling programs. It a failure occurs once a year, it is fine to just ignore it but when it repeats, you need to change your way of thinking.
Most organizations don’t have a good sponsorship and without the sponsor along with the help of a change agent, it is not possible to achieve your target. Sponsor plays a huge role in a successful RCA program and he has to be completely involved in a meeting, progress reports, and whatever analysis and what not goes around in that program within the company. He is the one who has to keep the process going on. He needs to think of ideas to build interaction between the target and the change agents. A good sponsor recognizes when to involve change management and when to show the results – in terms of ROI—to set the expectations for further funding.
The second element is resource plan to have clear estimates of resources that you will have to put in place, decide their roles and responsibilities, and have a program champion. He will manage the overall progress, train strategically, and help facilitators in every way he can. He needs to make sure every analysis is successfully done and reported. He will be tracking progress and improving skills of the participants.
Then there is, planning triggers for the RCA as to when will you be performing it. You have to just identify a specific incident and take action. Preservation of evidence is really important because it creates different opportunities. You also need to have a standards reporting mechanism with every formal placement and unified format. A tracking system should be there to keep eye on things, alert people, and set dates. You need to look for common causes of failure in terms of systematic and equipment solution. ROI should be calculated each time to show the tracking value of RCA.
Eruditio Links:
- Eruditio, LLC
- A Smarter Way of Preventative Maintenance – Free eBook
- Maintenance Planning & Scheduling: Planning for Profitability Video Course
- info@eruditio.com
Kevin Stewart & KPS Reliability Links:
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