problem-solving tool Archives - Better Process Solutions

Causal factor chart, what it is and how does it help to solve problems?

Find the causal factors of a problem with a causal factor chart.

When trying to solve a problem, it is critical to grasp the situation first. A causal factor chart is a tool that provides a structure to find the possible causes. After we understand what is happening, we will know where we need to look and what information to collect. This step is critical to finding the root cause of a problem or incident.

What is a causal factor chart?

This chart or map is a graphical description of the sequence of events leading to a loss situation or accident. It describes those events and the conditions associated with them.

Causal factors are elements that, if removed, would prevent the occurrence or reduce its severity. The causal factor charting process provides a structure to organize and analyze the information collected. It is efficient to find the causal factors of safety and environmental incidents, where the timeline of the events is critical.

Components of a causal factor chart

Incident investigation requires identifying the preceding events and conditions that cause the situation under study. This chart has three components, the main event or incident, preceding events, and conditions.

The starting point of the diagram is the main event or situation under investigation. A loss event or incident is any situation where the outcome and the expected result are not equal. In other words, the result is different from the standard. The preceding events are the sequence of actions that happen before the incident. Accidents rarely result due to one single factor. Instead, it is a group of events such as shortcuts, mistakes, and omissions. All these events lead to the incident or loss event.

The third component, conditions

Those events occurred because a set of conditions facilitates their occurrence. Conditions are those things that create the circumstances or ideal surroundings for the incident to happen. Some examples are the weather, equipment state, or a person’s state of mind.

How do you build a causal factor chart? That is the subject of a future post, but first, let’s discuss the best practices to create them.

Leadership & Team Development

Creativity, how do you boost it? Use and teach PDCA.

Creativity in the workplace is not used enough. Employees are used to following instructions, if they have a problem, they call the boss and wait for instructions. When you start the continuous improvement journey, you will empower them to find solutions for their daily issues. The first time you tell them that they will look at you with disbelief, and the next couple of weeks, and months they will wait for your change in opinion.

Creativity and PDCA

Why do they react that way? First, because after years of not-thinking and waiting for others to solve some problems while they know the solutions seem unreal. The second reason is fear of what can happen to them if they messed up. But, by using PDCA and teaching them how to use it, you are going to help them to learn a standard way to solve problems. PDCA is a guide, a standard of the thinking process to solve a problem.

Developing trust in the creative process

By participating along with your team on the problem-solving process using PDCA, they learn and start to trust it. Your reaction when something does not go as planned is critical to the learning process. Most of the time, the first solution is not the right one. The way you react will determine whether they will take risks or not.

If the test fails, be honest, and acknowledge it. On the other hand, highlight the learning piece of it. By doing that, people will start to learn that it is ok to make mistakes. When you react by reflecting on the lessons learned and adjust the plan based on those learnings, they notice it and gain the confidence to do the same. By consistently follow that pattern, you will be developing trust, which is critical for a continuous improvement culture.

Boosting creativity

PDCA is not only the standard to solve problems, but a way to boost their creativity. It does it by unleashing ideas in a controlled test environment. Over time, they learn more about how to use the tool. More importantly, how to think without limits about new and creative ways to solve problems and improve their processes. When that happens, you will be the one in disbelief, asking yourself why you did not start doing this before.

Tools

Here is another example of 5 Why, this time in a restaurant.

Here is another example of how to use the 5 Whys, this time in a service environment. For example, in a restaurant, the symptom is a customer complaining about the waiting time. Unfortunately, the way many people would fix this is by apologizing to the customer and make sure that he or she gets the food as fast as possible. What is the problem? What is the root cause of the problem?

Remember our friends from Yummy Broth? They are a small restaurant specialized in soups, but they also served salads and sandwiches. One day, not one or two, but four customers were complaining about the service. The truth is that the food was not arriving in a reasonable amount of time, and the front-end supervisor was concerned. They managed to get food in front of the customers to fix the immediate problem. The manager does not want this to happen again. She knows how to use 5 Whys, so next day during their stand-up meeting, she went ahead to analyze the root cause of the situation.

For this problem, probably most people will choose to expedite the food for the complaining customers, a second group would try to find a root-cause and will stop with the third or the fourth why. Only if you keep digging, will find that the root cause is that there is no standard work. Even if team members want to help, they could not do the right thing because there is no instruction to do the work. Without a standard, effective cross-training is not possible. At least the manager knows better and keeps asking why until the real reason was uncovered. Now, she should be creating that standard work with the team to organize cross-training.

Tools

What is 5 Why analysis? How to use 5 Why and Fishbone diagram for root cause analysis.

One of my favorite tools for root cause analysis is 5 Why. I like it because it is simple, and you can use it anywhere, and for any situation. You don’t need to do complicated analysis, take notes or draw anything, you only need to keep your brain asking why until you find the root cause for the problem. It is also very helpful to see the relationship between different causes.

This tool is simple but requires practice. The number of times you ask why depends on each particular situation; five it is not a number written on stone. If you stop asking why too soon, you will end up far away from the real root cause and asking too many times result in complaints or non-sense answers.

Most of the time the root cause of a problem falls into one of these categories

No standard or inadequate standard
Not following the standard
Inadequate system or equipment

These are the steps to do a Five Why analysis.

Define the problem.
Start describing the problem using all details from the problem definition.
Ask why the problem happens, this is the answer to your first why.
If the answer does not identify the root cause, ask why again. This is the answer to this why.
Keep repeating the fourth step until you identify the root cause.

My last post was about fishbone, another tool that I used very often. I like to use it to explore all possible causes because it helps to force people to think beyond the obvious reasons. Once you complete the cause and effect diagram, you should end up with one or two causes. At this point, you can use the 5 Whys to drill down the root causes.

The fishbone I used is from an analysis completed in a food manufacturing plant. We were looking for the cause of getting excess oil in the body of cans containing oil products. The fishbone analysis results in two possible causes, both of them related to the equipment used to wash the cans. The causes were the alignment of the detergent nozzles and the quantity of soap dispensed. We used the 5 Whys to determine the root cause of each, and we find that the reason was that there was no standard for the setting of the equipment.

Most of the time, when a problem happens, the first thing you see is a symptom. In this example, the symptom was oily cans. Without root cause analysis, most probably we would stop at insufficient training, but with fishbone and 5 Why we were able to drill down to the ugly truth, a standard was never established.

Now you have two simple and effective tools to use to find the root cause of a problem. Practice PDCA and use these tools for RCA, you will see the difference between traditional and lean problem-solving.

Business Performance

Do you really want to go back to normal? Business as usual, will not going to cut it anymore.

These days you can hear the phrase when we go back to normal, dozens of times a day. We all want to return to our normal lives, right?

As a lean practitioner, I believe that each event is a learning opportunity, the coronavirus pandemic is no different. During these slower days, there is time to learn new things and plan for the future. Lean is all about learning, experimenting, and adapting. That is just what everybody needs to learn now. Every day I read about how people are adapting to the new normal, and many are using lean or continuous improvement thinking without knowing it. For me, at this moment, Lean style problem solving is the on-demand skill.

I am not the only one that thinks that way. Last year, the Indiana Department of Workforce Development (DWD), published Indiana’s Employability Skills Benchmarks. It describes a set of 18 workplace skills recommended for success in today’s competitive workforce. One of the skills identified in the learning strategies category is problem-solving.

The way each business adapts the operation to comply with the CDC guidelines is unique. The solutions are not one-size-fits-all, and on top of that, those guidelines change as they gathered more information. Learning how to use a systematic process like PDCA and apply lean thinking is critical to identify and implement the new operational guidelines for your business.

This situation catches most people without the skills to learn and adapt, but it is never late to start. You are on time to start using lean thinking to approach the current challenges. With practice, you can build that muscle memory that will guide you through times like this. The new normal then should be something better than before the coronavirus pandemic. It is like when you create the future state value-stream-map, imagine a better and stronger business and plan how to make it happen! Many will go back to business as usual, your competitive advantage will be your new way to do business.

Better Process Solutions can help you to start designing your new processes, get in touch!

Tools

Why Plan is critical for the success of your PDCA?

Monday, I talked about what the PDCA cycle is. Today I want to highlight how critical the step Plan is.

Many times, while analyzing a problem, we don’t spend enough time understanding it. Instead of looking for the root cause of the problem, we start developing theories to correct the symptoms. If we create a plan to test possible solutions to the wrong problem, then the plan is doomed to fail.

The most important part of the PDCA cycle is understanding the problem. Get the background of the current situation. Even when you think you know the process, ask why it exists. Check the capability, expected outcomes, and actual performance. What value does it provide to the customer? Research regarding any possible risks, policies or regulations that can affect efficiency.

You must spend time observing what is going on. Go to gemba, where the action happens. Observe for as long as you can, and take notes to compare against all the data. You cannot have the whole story if you don’t go and see it for yourself. Go ahead and talk with your team, the people who do the work. Respectfully ask questions to understand the situation from their point of view.

After you know the process, define the problem. What is the gap between the expectation or goals and the current results? Describe the current situation using data, charts, tables or diagrams. Use tools like the 5 Whys and Fishbone diagrams to understand why that gap exists. It is critical for success that you identify the root cause of the problem. Otherwise, you will be working with symptoms and not the real problem.

Engage the team in the discussion of possible solutions. Go to gemba again and brainstorm with the people doing the work. If you find more than one root cause, rank them according to which has the greatest impact on the problem. At this point, you should have all the information you need to propose countermeasures or possible solutions. Tie your action items with the root cause while creating the plan. Who is responsible for doing what? How? Where? By when?

During this initial step, you determine the success of the PDCA exercise. You are trying to formulate theories to explain the gap between the standard and current performance, without the complete information, your theory will be wrong.

Tools

PDCA, what it means, and for what it is used.

PDCA is a problem-solving methodology aiming to solve problems in four steps, plan, do, check, act. — Deming Wheel or PDCA Cycle

PDCA and the scientific method

Have you used PDCA? Have you ever tried to solve a recurrent problem over and over without success? Do you remember everything you tried? How much time do you spend on defining the problem? Do you understand what the problem is? Do you understand the process you are trying to fix? Maybe, part of the problem is that you don’t have a method for problem-solving.

The PDCA cycle is a problem-solving methodology applied by many organizations in different industries. Remember when you were in school, and you learn in science about hypothesis and experimentation? PDCA is a way to test different theories in a controlled environment. It is based on the scientific method, a process used by scientists to test whether any statement or theory is accurate.

PDCA stands for Plan, Do, Check, Act. There are a couple of variations or names for it, like PDSA (Plan-Do-Study-Act), Deming Wheel, and Shewhart Cycle. The cycle is a four steps model for problem solving and processes or services continuous improvement. Below is a basic description of each step.

The steps: Plan, Do, Check, Act

After you recognize an opportunity for improvement or a problem, you start with the first step, Plan. As the name indicates, during this step you plan the activities and set the goals for your experiment. It is important to understand the situation and analyze the problem, or opportunity before developing theories about what the issues may be. As soon as all this is clear, decide which one to test.

During the second step, Do, you test the solution. You carry out a small-scale study by completing the planned activities, including measuring the results.

In Check, the third step, you study or analyze the results, and decide if the hypothesis is correct or not. What did you learn? Did you accomplish the objectives or goals stated during the Plan step?

The last step is Act, where you take action based on the previous step learnings. If the objectives were not accomplished, you need to go through the cycle again. If the test was successful, use what you learned to improve the process. While implementing the solution, do not forget to change the standard work and communicate the changes to the team.

Benefits of PDCA

PDCA provides a standard method for problem-solving. While you document each step, you keep a map or journal of everything you tested so far. You know without guessing what works or not. PDCA is simple to follow and is an excellent tool for any kind of improvement activity like, designing a new product or implementing changes in a process. With PDCA, you will not find yourself scratching your head trying to remember what you tried before.