Top Ten Root Causes of Business Problems
| by Chris Anderson | ||||
Problems manifest themselves in many ways but to truly solve a problem you must make sure you have found the root cause. A good place to start is by understanding the top ten root causes to most business problems you will encounter.
The number one root cause management usually jumps to is (1) Poor Training. Yes, training is a root cause to some problems but, it is not the sole reason why things go wrong. Many times employees may not be (2) following procedures. Unused procedures are not effective. Why aren’t they following procedures? Perhaps because they are (3) poorly written procedures. If a procedure is unclear it is a lot harder to follow. Even well-written procedures are not perfect.
(4) Poor employee placement can result in mistakes too. Your employee may not be the right person for the job. Better screening, job descriptions, or testing can help you to place the right person in the right job. Yet even with the right person you could have (5) poor methods that have been outdated but not changed, or at least the changes were poorly communicated.
We are half way through the list of the top ten root causes. Next, (6) poor inspection causes mistakes. This is really about attention to detail, understanding your product, and caring for the output that you are passing on to the next step in the process. Pay attention and take the time to inspect your product and you will reduce a very common root cause.
Related to inspection is (7) poor maintenance. If you neglect your equipment then it is more likely to malfunction. Lean thinking focuses on preventive maintenance, which means regularly maintaining your equipment to ensure it does not break down in the middle of something important you are doing. Of course it could be breaking down because of a (8) poor engineering or design in the first place. Focus on designing in quality by doing it right the first time and you will avoid this root cause.
Are you selecting (9) poor inputs or materials because the price is right? If so, then perhaps your management has (10) poor rewards or incentives in place? I am not talking about just money. Recognition of good quality or pointing out poor quality performance may be all that is needed to send the message that quality is important and thus preventing many of these root causes in the first place.
Top Ten Root Causes of Business Problems
- Poor training – Mistakes are made due to the lack of proper training.
- Poor procedure usage- Mistakes are made because procedures are not or cannot be followed.
- Poorly written procedures – Mistakes are made due to unclear procedures.
- Poor employee placement- Mistakes are made because the employee is not physically capable of executing the procedure and is in the wrong role or position.
- Poor methods- Mistakes are made because employees are following outdated methods that used to produce quality product but, conditions have changed and the method has not been updated.
- Poor inspection- Mistakes are made because inspections are either not performed at the right time or with the right scrutiny, or not performed at all.
- Poor maintenance- Mistakes are made because the equipment is not sustained or preserved, either by neglect (see 2) or ignorance (see 1).
- Poor engineering or design- Mistakes are made because of a bad initial design.
- Poor inputs or materials- Mistakes are made because of poor quality raw materials.
- Poor rewards or incentives- Mistakes are made because of either a lack of emphasis on good quality performance or the failure to reject poor quality performance.
People don’t make mistakes. Systems make mistakes. If you have a system for training, well-written procedures, following-up on procedure usage (i.e. internal auditing, metrics, rewards), developing competent employees for the role they are placed in, updating and innovating methods, attention to detail, disciplined maintenance, quality designs, constant rewards and incentives for good work, and supplier validations, then you would have eliminated 80% of all of your failures or mistakes. The last 20% is left to the individual’s ability to operate the system you have just created. What do we call such a system? A Quality Management System!
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Business Improvement Services • Procedures Manuals • Top Ten
Tags:
lean thinking • Policies • Policies and Procedures • quality • quality management • root cause
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Originally published in 2009 by Bizmanualz, Inc. under the title Top Ten Root Causes of Business Problems. All rights reserved. Reproduction permitted with attribution only. www.bizmanualz.com
2 Responses to “Top Ten Root Causes of Business Problems”
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July 25th, 2009 at 7:08 am
This has been a very educative and mind tickling article. Thanks for opening up my imaginations. Keep it up please.
December 7th, 2011 at 11:53 pm
[...] seem to understand the concept of real defects needing to be fixed—permanently, so they do not cause further aggravation. But what about preventive [...]