In a quest to develop a comprehensive approach to an effective RCA program I have found numerous books and article on how to perform or application of root cause analysis in all the various methodologies available but limited information on the management process involved in ensuring it is a sustainable program.
If you wish to comment or give examples on what a RCA management policy should contain, this would provide an initial starting point to developing a policy so we could use,apply and learn from.

Hello Dave,

For RCA to be sustainable within any business I believe there are two key areas that are fundamental to a successful RCA program. I would suggest including the following within your RCA management policy.

1 – Have an organizational structure to support the RCA program which includes roles, responsibilities and training requirements.

2 – Have threshold criteria in place which triggers when an RCA needs to be performed.

I have attached an example for number 1. If you would like more information please feel free to contact me directly.

gtyne@globalreliability.com


Cheers Gary

www.globalreliability.com

Organizational__Structure_for_RCA.pdf (45 Kb, 110 downloads) Organisational Structure

Hello Dave,

I have some references on my site on how to make RCFA part of stuctured system which I would like to share with you and the rest. Here's the link :

http://www.rsareliability.com/articles.htm

Hope it helps.

My Warm Regards,

It’s not as easy as it sound and much harder to implement but if you want long term commitment it’s going to take big changes such as, change manager in to facilitator and worker in to entrepreneur. Note that you need real change on both sides to accomplish any good. Stay away from structures and organizational tasks because these things have a tendency to erode over time. Stick with changes that foster commitment and remember that commitment is not a list of things to do.

RCA Champion / custodian is must for effective management. Various KPIs can be defined to monitor effectiveness of RCA process. We have to narrowed down to one methodology / process to be used across the organisation and train related employees for that. Software for easy tracking will be very useful.Trigger for RCA can be XXXXXX$ production loss or any incidence of regulation violation...

quote:

Originally posted by Dave Alexander:
In a quest to develop a comprehensive approach to an effective RCA program I have found numerous books and article on how to perform or application of root cause analysis in all the various methodologies available but limited information on the management process involved in ensuring it is a sustainable program.
If you wish to comment or give examples on what a RCA management policy should contain, this would provide an initial starting point to developing a policy so we could use,apply and learn from.

Hi Dave

We have a baseline RCA Procedure we use with our clients. It provides a draft that will help identify triggers to do an RCA, how to assimilate a team, how to collect evidence, how to analyze the data, how to report findings and track their effectiveness and how to store and manage the knowledge from the RCA.

I will be upfront in terms of disclosure that this procedure was developed to accommodate our PROACT RCA Approach and Software and may not be suitable for all purposes.

I hope this is helpful from a benchmarking standpoint.

Bob Latino
Reliability Center, Inc.
www.reliability.com

UPDATED_RCA-PROC.pdf (30 Kb, 56 downloads) PROACT RCA Procedure

I suggest that you begin with the end result in mind. What do you want from RCA? In my quest to improve RCA, My goal was to fix every breakdown the first time that we worked on it, and to prevent it from happening again. Next, I made a list of the tools or improvements that I needed to improve root cause analysis. The list included having a wireless work order system, paperless drawings, RCA meetings to discuss every breakdown every day, training, and improving communication. I also modified our work order to include a 5-why analysis, and a section to list the root cause and recurrence prevention. I think that people make it harder than it really is to improve RCA. I didn’t use software or consultants for my improvements, but I did use my experience, perseverance and vision. I didn’t make a policy, but I did make a plan and kept adjusting when I learned something new or found a better approach.

Hi Dave,

Having developed an RCA process that was fairly successful until the next mill management change, I have a few comments. I concur with RR, a champion of the RCA process is essential. Since you specifically mention the management of an RCA process for sustainability, I am going to assume you already have a fairly solid RCA methodology in place with appropriate triggers for RCA investigations and a process to guide your RCA's from failure through to implementation of RCA action items. The champion then has two primary responsibilities. 1) Inform, educate, and inspire management so that they recognize and support this important facet of the Reliability process. 2) Cultivate a supportive culture within the organization which understands and embraces their roles in Root Cause Analysis activities.

The process to inform, educate, and inspire plant or corporate management must take into consideration that for many reliability activities are only one of many priorities. The information sharing must be pertinent and concise. Whether we like it or not, a big portion of this task is salesmanship. You must convince management that the RCA process is worth their time and support. Communicating results by using accepted KPIs and tying completed RCAs to positive financial results is crucial. Wisely utilizing your opportunities to educate these leaders on the benefits of RCA specifically and reliability in general, goes a long way toward building the necessary support for a sustainable program.

Cultivating the supportive culture across the facility or company also requires some salesmanship, but there is more education and enabling required for this task. Fortunately a good RCA process provides results which can be all the sales pitch required. Capturing and sharing the results from your RCAs in newsletters and as topics for groups meetings will build a positive view of what RCAs can do. Anecdotes of interesting or highly successful RCAs that can be easily understood by a broad audience should be well publicized. Obviously this brings up a basic premise of successful RCAs which is to avoid the blame game and focus upon the true root causes which are couched as management system deficiencies, i.e. ineffective training, lack of a standard operating procedure, less than adequate communication between work groups, etc. As the management support is garnered, then the education of persons throughout the organization on their roles in performing and responding to RCAs becomes easier. Even the most well conceived RCA process will not be sustained if the understanding of and responsibility for RCA results rests with one group or department.

Finally, it's my opinion that a good RCA process will only flourish if it is a coordinated component of a larger improvement initiative that has reliability as a chief goal. Lean, Six-sigma, and other Continuous Improvement initiatives are all compatible with reliability and the RCA process, but unless they are integrated they risk becoming competitors for the limited resources most organizations have. A solid RCA process may be sustained as a stand-alone initiative. However the optimum is to promote it for what it is, a tool that can be effective in helping us learn from previous failures, and incorporate it in with a broader initiative that encompasses continuous improvement as a way of life.

Dave

The new TapRooT® book has a whole chapter about making a sustainable program (Chapter 6) plus an appendix (Appendix A) about developing a policy. It also has an appendix (Appendix C) for current TapRooT® users that provides ideas for improving an already existing program.

Also, most equipment reliability folks might be interested in Chapter 9, a whole cha[pter about the Equifactor® Troubleshooting methods that are derived from Heinz Bloch's work and licensed for use in TapRooT®. And of course the book fully documents the TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis System.

Although the book is TapRooT® specific, the ideas about a sustainable program would apply to most incident investigation, equipment reliability improvement, or root cause analysis programs.

To review the table of contents, see:

http://www.taproot.com/wordpress/2008/05/12/whats-in-the-new-taproot®-book/ http://www.taproot.com/wordpress/2008/05/12/whats-in-the-new-taproot®-book/

To order the book, see:

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

Hope this helps.

Best Regards,

Mark Paradies
President
System Improvements, Inc.
238 South Peters Road
Knoxville, TN 37923 USA
Phone: 865-539-2139
Web Site: http://www.taproot.com http://www.taproot.com

We have a best practice document and a RCA process/produre document that I will share with you if you send me your email. We are not consultants but practicioners. Bordelonk@zachry.com