Hello To All,

Can I ask you opinion if there are any difference between the following so we can avoid confusion in our terminologies. Or these three are entirely the same.

1) Root Cause Analysis

2) Root Cause Failure Analysis

3) Failure Analysis

I'll state mine later when I read your posts.

My Warm Regards,


Rolly Angeles
Teacher

Rolly

In my opinion - if one is proactive - a failure is not required to find a root cause - so I prefer the more proactive term Root Cause Analysis rather the reactive term Root Cause Failure Analysis.

Terry O

They fits different situations.

Josh:
How? For which type of situations each method is applicable?

The word "root cause" implies that it is a very rigorous analysis and perhaps addressing many layers of the "why" questions.

At our plant, a "root cause analysis" is limited to about 10 people specifically trained and qualified in root cause determination techniques. Typically it would also involve a large team and report would be 20+ pages. We also have "apparent cause analysis" which are not as rigorous as a root cause analysis, but still formal, documented, and often 10+ pages of analysis, still use techniques such as barrier analysis, change analysis, event and causal factor charting, fault tree, etc.

The word "failure" usually implies you are addressing an equipment failure. There are of course many other types of root cause analyses, applied to events that did not involve equipment failure (for example human error caused crash of an airplane).

A few years ago I had the same doubt.I asked Mr.Robert.J.Latino(www.reliability.com,PROACT Software)for an explanation.He send me a reply which I have copied below.
Thomas Purackal.
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Recently, Reliability Center, Inc. received an inquiry from one of our web visitors asking the differences between three confusingly similar Reliability acronyms. We thought others in the Reliability community may also wonder what the differences are between Failure Analysis (FA), Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and Root Cause Failure Analysis (RCFA) so we decided to share with you our view on this. Please keep in mind that the explanation contained in this article is strictly Reliability Center, Inc.'s viewpoint only.


Failure Analysis:

Stopping an analysis at the Physical Root Causes. This is typically where most people stop, what they call their "Failure Analysis". The Physical Root is at a tangible level, usually a component level. We find that it has failed and we simply replace it. I call it a "parts changer" level because we did not learn HOW the "part failed."

Root Cause Failure Analysis:

Indicates conducting a comprehensive analysis down to all of the root causes (physical, human and latent), but connotes analysis on mechanical items only. I have found that the word "Failure" has a mechanical connotation to most people. Root Cause Analysis is applicable to much more than just mechanical situations. It is an attempt on our part to change the prevailing paradigm about Root Cause and its applicability.

Root Cause Analysis:

Implies the conducting of a full-blown analysis that identifies the Physical, Human and Latent Root Causes of HOW any undesirable event occurred. The word "Failure" has been removed to broaden the definition to include such non-mechanical events like safety incidents, quality defects, customer complaints, administrative problems (i.e. - delayed shutdowns) and the similar events.

Hello All,

Here is my distinction between the three :

Failure Analysis

If we speak about failure analysis, it is right to say that we stop our analysis on the component level, or the physical analysis of the failure. We refer here to the metallurgical aspect as to why the failure occur, then the analysis stops. Example, when you send a bearing to the lab, they will check the raceway and conclude that it was fatigue, mostly the analysis stops here and the lab will recommend countermeasure but the human cause and latent cause was not determined.

Root Cause Failure Analysis

Both RCFA and RCA is performed by determining the physical, human and latent cause of the problem. The disctinction is the word failure, when we include the word failure in Root Cause Failure Analysis, then we refer to equipment related failures where we perform RCFA. Hence, my training is entitled Root Cause Failure Analysis since, this refers to equipment related failures.


Root Cause Analysis

This is much broader in scope as this can be applied to medicine, terrorism, safety, siesmoloyg etc., and for industry related issues this is used for quality related issues and defects elimination.
Ex. In one hospital a patient died because the attending nurse injected the wrong blood type in the patient, because the patient switch beds, now this will warant an RCA investigation approach.


My Warm Regards,

Rolly Angeles
Teacher