In this paper a simple practical point on RCA is expressed in an overly scientific way, therefore making it sound weird, IMO.

Which particular point are you reacting to? The original article or the responses?

At our plant (as I believe many others), the level of effort expended to investigate the cause of a failure depends on the significance of the failure. If there was a big consequence or near miss for very big consequence, we spend a lot of time. If small consequence, not so much time.

We have terms "root cause analysis" to describe the level of effort and rigor associated with the significant failures and "apparent cause analysis" to describe the level of effort and rigor that we spend on less significant failures. It is a recognition of the reality stated by the author of the first article above that not all failure are worthy of significant investigative effort.

However I didn't particularly like him saying there is no such thing as "root cause analysis"... sounds like arguing over terminology... our program has a definition of exactly what we mean when we use the term "root cause analysis" as well as "apparent cause analysis"

I have reacted to the original article.

A few years ago I have attended a RCFA seminar, which utilizied a cause-effect mapping method, presented by "Think Reliability". The instructor made a statement that once ALL causes were considered and mapped, the cause-effect flow diagram becomes a complete troubleshooting guide. I can't agree more with the above.

In the author's example, one obviously wants first to eliminate a cause which is already known in general and is confirmed in his case - misalignment. This becomes feasible because someone before already did a full blown RCFA.

If so, then the author should not have stated that there is no always a need for RCFA. IMO, he should have said "Utilize an existing one", or "do a simple one, verify one cause prior to spending time in a search for another one". But to make a statement, such as "….do we always have to know the root causes to find great solutions? Absolutely not!" is logically wrong since no solution can be found without knowing the cause ( except for a case when people are lucky in guessing one ).