Root Cause Analysis Tip: You Know How to Perform a TapRooT® RCA but Where Do You Target Your Resources?

Let’s be honest, all companies want a good Return on Investment (ROI) on any investment. This is exactly why Mark Paradies and Linda Unger provide a section in our TapRooT®, Changing the Way the World Solves Problems book titled A Guide to Improving the Use of TapRooT®. The tip today focuses on Topic 2: Target Selection.

If you have set up good metrics to measure (Read these for more ideas on metrics: (Tip 1, Tip 2), you can start by looking for your Top Drivers in a Pareto Chart. The idea is that if 80% of your issues are caused by or correlated to 20% of a sampled set of categories, then start there first for more ROI. Review the Chart below and then read the cautions below:

Cautions:

1. “Never Ever Ever” define a category as “Miscellaneous” or “Other”! I promise you that it will always be in the Top Three every time.

2. When it comes to the y-Axis on the Chart, do not just use Cost as a measurement, also use Risk and Frequency. One near miss may not have cost any money but it could have killed someone. If you look at Cost or Frequency only, this would not show up as a Top Driver.

Another Quick Way to decide where to Target your resources is to use a Plot Map. Read more here as to how this map reduced illnesses from the water supply in certain areas.

Finally you may want to measure how accurate and precise your improvements have been. In earlier trending articles (1, 3) we introduced the Process Behavior Chart. Below is one more example of how to measure Risk Reduction using a scatter and bulls-eye chart.

Here is a quick description on what the charts represent:

1. The Center (Bulls-Eye) of the chart represents that the risk targeted has been eliminated.

2. Each subsequent ring of the target indicates risk mitigation at lower levels (the outside rings do show risk mitigation but not as strong as the inner rings).

3. The red dots indicate the actual risk level mitigated for each RCA performed with corrective actions implemented and verified for effectiveness (sounds like SMARTER technique from class don’t it?).

Looking at charts above, which two Charts would you be happy with and why?

To find out where to receive hands on training for the next TapRooT® Trending Course look here: http://www.taproot.com/courses.php#c7

Category: Accidents, Courses, Performance Improvement, Quality, Root Cause Analysis Tips, Summit, TapRooT

9 Comments »

Hi Chris. Great article. Enjoyed the perspective on the dreaded “other” category.
Have an excellent day.
Darrin
(Calgary)
Comment by Darrin Raymond — July 19, 2011 @ 12:43 pm
Thanks Darrin,
I was just in Calgary last week teaching during the stampede.
Comment by Chris Vallee — July 19, 2011 @ 8:23 pm
it’s little nuggets like this that sets TapRoot apart from other sources. always pick up something I can use.
Comment by Virgil Pattarino — August 3, 2012 @ 9:51 am
Hi Virgil,
Thank you very much for your comment. Feel free to contact me anytime if you have more questions about targeting the right data.
Chris
Comment by Chris Vallee — August 3, 2012 @ 10:02 am
Chris,
Great subject. One question. You mentioned “risk and frequency” and go on to talk about severity as in “someone could have gotten killed”. I’m confused over this mix of concepts and their apparent interchangeability in your article.
Comment by Michael Rodriguez — August 16, 2012 @ 3:02 pm
Michael,
Great question and I always get that from people in this industry. : )
Often in the matrix’s that I see, cost, probability and risk are tied together as one. When I look at this topic, I separate it as follows:
1. Risk – equates to the degree of impact to person, property, environment, business or process, that could occur if the issue occurs. The higher potential for death, for example, the greater the risk classification. In my FMEA a 1 rating is no to limited risk, a 3 rating for moderate risk, and a 9 rating for high risk.
2. Cost is just that, how much to did it cost financially. Everybody likes to make that chart. Many would look at a cost chart and see that no apparent injury (based on cost) occurred and no property damage occurred, and then say, “nothing major here!” If it happens again let’s just do an ACE on it.
3. Frequency is a count of how many times it happens.
Hopes this gives you a deeper and scary look in my mind.. but still helped. : )
Comment by Chris Vallee — August 16, 2012 @ 3:50 pm
I would like to avoid (others) in my costing. Please advise
Comment by Clement Munsele Nsandula — August 23, 2012 @ 3:38 am
Hello Clement,
Great question. I am also sending an email offline. While I can not give a specific answer to your issue, here is an example I have seen that created a costing issue.
Cost Codes were set up for the basic operation needs. Unfortunately all the direct and in-direct cost needs were not identified upfront. When someone purchased an item with no cost code that fit, the system allowed them to purchase it under the code “general”, this is identical to the “other” category. This should have been put on hold for clarification before the purchase was made.
After a while of spending money, the boss said, “run a costing report”. The “general” category was one of our biggest drivers. When we dug down into what was actually bought we found that some costs belonged into other categories and some costs did not have a code to use. Time to fix the system.
Comment by Chris Vallee — August 23, 2012 @ 7:26 am
really , i got good knowledge through this
thanks a lot
Comment by Muhammad Atif Javeed — March 18, 2013 @ 5:43 am