Root Cause Analysis And Example
First of all, what is the root cause analysis?
Root cause analysis, or RCA, this is a way that people look into and label the causes of health, quality, safety, production, reliability. This is used to find out what happened, why it happened, and how.
The knowledge of why an event happened helps us to better understand how to prevent it from happening again and again. Stopping the cycle before it restarts.
There are several ways to define the root cause, but the simplest is this:
- First, the root causes are specific, they have underlying causes.
- Second, the causes can be identified reasonably.
- Third, The root causes are fixable from management who has control to do so.
- Last, root causes are able to be prevented from reoccurring. That being said, I want to provide some root cause analysis examples in wording and in links to help you understand this better.
A simple explanation is this:
Last Friday night, around 7pm, I was making dinner. While cooking, my phone started to ring. I picked it up to hear my sister crying, after being broken up with. I left the kitchen to speak to her, so that I could comfort her.
As I was finishing up the conversation, I heard the fire alarm going off, I ran to the kitchen finding flames rising from my dinner. I tried to put out the fire out with the extinguisher, but it didn’t work when I pulled the ring. It was not charged. I called the fire department, and they arrived in time to save half of the kitchen.
Following the events detailed, here is the answers to what happened, why, and how this happened:
What:
● A fire broke out in the kitchen.
When:
● This evening.
How:
● Food was being prepared on the stove, and was left unattended.
Why:
● I left the food unattended, and the oil boiled over causing a fire to break out.
● The extinguisher did not function properly and allowed the fire to grow.
This could have been avoided if I had training with a fire extinguisher, and had not walked away from the food.
Here is another root cause analysis example:
On March 15, 2007, A type of pet food was sold that contained contaminated pet food from China. The supplier in China provided food that had not been tested by the FDA. The food killed over a 1,000 animals worldwide. 150 brands were involved, and 100 class action lawsuits were filed.
Following the events detailed, here is the answers to what happened, why, and how this happened:
When:
March 15
How:
The supplier provided the food ingredients to the companies.
What:
Pets were killed from bad food, totaling at least 1,000.
Why:
Supplier sold non-regulated food to the companies causing the animals to get sick and for some, it caused death.
This could have been prevented if the companies would have had their ingredients checked. They could have prevented the loss of money they endured were they to test these ingredients.