March 12, 2018 | Ken Reed

Hire a Professional

root cause analysis, RCA, investigation

I know every company is trying to do the best they can with the resources that are available. We ask a lot of our employees and managers, trying to be as efficient as we can.

However, sometimes we need to recognize when we need additional expertise to solve a particular problem. Or, alternatively, we need to ensure that our people have the tools they need to properly perform their job functions.  Companies do this for many job descriptions:

  • Oil analyst
  • Design engineer
  • Nurse
  • Aircraft Mechanic

I don’t think we would ask our Safety Manager to repair a jet engine.  THAT would be silly!

However, for some reason, many companies think that it is OK to ask their aircraft mechanics to perform a root cause analysis without giving them any additional training.  “Looks like we had a problem with that 737 yesterday.  Joe, go investigate that and let me know what you find.”  Why would we expect Joe, who is an excellent mechanic, to be able to perform a professional root cause analysis without being properly trained?  Would we send our Safety Manager out to repair a jet engine?

It might be tempting to assume that performing an RCA is “easy,” and therefore does not require professional training.  This is somewhat true.  It is easy to perform bad RCA’s without professional training.  While performing effective  investigations does not require years of training, there is a certain minimum competency you should expect from your team, and it is not fair to them to throw them into a situation which they are not trained to handle.

Ensure you are giving your team the support they need by giving them the training required to perform excellent investigations.  A 2-Day TapRooT® Essential Techniques Course is probably all your people will need to perform investigations with terrific results.

 

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Root Cause Analysis
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