Taproot

Here’s an interesting story from The Telegraph (a UK newspaper):

“Uk’s most accident-prone place”

What do you think? Are some locations more accident prone?

Or is this just an example of interpreting the statistics the way you want to see them?

I notices that the “rates” they used were per 100,000 or per 10,000 people. But is this really the appropriate number?

Shouldn’t the denominator be per the risks encountered?

For example, the driving statistics should be per mile driven. Working at height should be per hours worked at height.

How do you interpret (or misinterpret) your statistics?

Seeing if you can find real trends means understanding how statistics can help uncover problems and how they can be misinterpreted.

Unfortunately, our next Advanced Trending Course is almost a year away (March 18-19, 2013 in Gatilinburg, TN). You can plan to attend it but, in the mean time, read Chapter 5 of your TapRooT® Book (Copyright 2008) and you can start using your statistics more effectively.

Here are the students working on their final exercise and giing their final presentation …

Alan Smith and I are teaching this course. Fifteen students busy learning about causal factors …

And then it is time to apply what they learned …

CLICK HERE to view more photos from this course.

Brian Dolin, teaching below, and I had the great opportunity to work with Nalco employees from different states here in Illinois this week.

Here’s the current, “computerized” Spin-A-Cause™ …

And here is what the original “Spin-A-Cause™” looked like …

What year was Spin-A-Cause™ invented?

Here’s Ken teaching the Evidence Collection Course …

And the class working on an exercise …

Linda (who is attending the Culture Course) talking to one of the other participants …

Richard teaching in the Culture Course …

The Stopping Human Error Course (Denis is teaching) …

Ken Scott and Mhorvan Sherret teaching one of the three 2-Day TapRooT® Incident Investigation and Root Cause Analysis Courses …

Michele Lindsay teaching with Brian Dolin in another 2-Day TapRooT® Incident Investigation and Root Cause Analysis Course …

And Ed Skompski and Sanjay Gandhi teaching the third 2-Day TapRooT® Incident Investigation and Root Cause Analysis Course …

And Harry Thorburn and Steve Swarthout teaching the Equifactor® Course …

Bill Sirois teaching the Fatigue Risk Management Class …

CLICK HERE to VIEW MORE Photos.

Here are pictures from four of the classes at the Pre-Summit Courses that started today.

Jim Whiting teaching the Risk Management Course …

Dan coaching a participant in the Getting the Most from Your TapRooT® Software Course …

Chris teaching the Six Sigma/Lean/Quality Root Cause Analysis Course …

Dave Janney teaching the Advanced TapRooT® Techniques Course …

And Kevin McManus teaching the TapRooT® Advanced Trending Techniques Course …

VIEW MORE Pre-Summit Course Photos.

Karen Migliaccio (TapRooT® Instructor) sent these photos and comments from a recent course …

The class is hard at work analyzing their root causes.

The Root Cause Dictionary is put to good use.

Working on the causal factors.

Final class presentations.

Rocking the TapRooT tee shirt.

Another great class!

From the get started exercise to the final exam, these participants had a good time and learned a lot. Now they are ready to go back to work and apply what they have learned to improve performance.

I am a sucker for a 1948 Indian Chief motorcycle.  So I  thought … what a great opportunity to talk about Human Factors Design and show off a little nostalgia. The topic of today is the Suicide Shifter.

The Suicide Shifter is located on the left side of the fuel tank and was used to shift gears while riding. Called a Suicide Shifter because you had to take your left hand off the handle bar grip to shift it.

So the question for you today is how many equipment control designs used today at your work area are not placed in the safest area to use while operating?

Mhorvan Sherret sent this photo from the class recently completed in Amsterdam. Another well trained group of TapRooT® Users ready to solve problems and improve performance.

In the human factors world there is an acronym, HCI. This stands for Human Computer Interaction. A subset of the human factors field, HCI is where computer software programers meet the computer user’s needs by design BEFORE they sell it. So…… have you seen the marketing and pre-beta download for Windows 8?

• Will the new version frustrate new or experienced window users? or both?
• Will Microsoft help experienced users transition?
• How will Microsoft help experience users transition (if they do) to the new version?
• Will software developers who have software used on Microsoft help transition their existing customers?

Windows 8 Developer Preview is available for you to try now: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/br229516

In our 5-Day TapRooT® Advanced Root Cause Analysis Team Leader Training Course and in our TapRooT® book, TapRooT® Changing the Way the World Solves Problems, we introduce the Critical Human Action Profile (CHAP) tool to help collect more information to analyze any type of problem at the process task level.  I like to call this looking at a problem at the 1 foot level as opposed to many investigations that analyze their problems at the 100,000 mile view only.

The tip here, however, is “why wait for a problem to use CHAP?”

Identify, Evaluate and Improve before it is too late!

Using a very over simplified list of procedure steps on How to Remove a Fuel Pump, found on the internet, I would like to show you how to use CHAP proactively to improve Safety and Quality during a task.

WARNING: The steps listed in the demonstration example below on removing a fuel pump shall not be used. They are incomplete and not necessarily accurate.

Where to start? First off you already perform  JHA, AHA, JSA, Observations…. So Going Out and Looking (GOAL) should not be new or require a lot more additional resources. The difference is that you will be utilizing your resources more efficiently.

1. Start by identifying a task performed by employees that are critical to:

a. Customer/client satisfaction

b. Product Quality

c. Project Timeliness

d. Employee Safety

e. Customer Safety

f. Environmental Exposure

2. Once the task is identified, list the steps to be performed like listed in the image below.
Note: Do not forget to use the Basic Cause Category Procedure in our TapRooT® Root Cause Tree to look for missing best practices as well when listing the steps.

3. Identify each step of the task that is critical to the items listed in step 1 criteria of this article.
Which steps listed above for the fuel pump removal do you think would be listed as critical?

4. For each critical step in the task perform a CHAP Profile.

Note: For each of the items listed below, do not forget to include the Best Practices listed under the Human Engineering Basic Cause Category in our TapRooT® Root Cause Tree.

Here are the students working hard on their final exercise …

And here are the final presentations …

If you are not in the picture, you missed a great course. But to can still find one close to you. See:

http://www.taproot.com/courses.php