90% of PROBEMS AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT ARE ALREADY KNOWN!

Recently I have facilitated a number of Root Cause Analysis ( RCA ) Workshops for organisations in the Food Processing Industry.

While there were a variety of different problems to be worked on, they  had one thing in common; they were well known and they had been in play for a very long time!

Dr. W Edwards Deming taught us many years ago that 85% of problems in organisations were Systems problems, leaving just 15% of problems described as People problems.

These Systems problems require a rigorous problem solving process like the one we use in our Problem Solving and RCA Workshops ( see 10 Stages of Problem Solving below .)

To get started on problem solving you have to do more than just notice a difference between what is currently happening versus what should be happening. You often need agreement that this difference is not a good thing and it is worth trying to solve.

This may sound self-evident but people in organisations know that when it is questioned as to why the current way is being carried out, the answer often comes back ” because that’s the way we have always done it!”

Happily we can report that we have seen groups attain very impressive results when tackling problems when they can meet the following:

1 Have the right people involved with knowledge and authority

2 Have all the data necessary to determine the root cause, and

3 Apply a rigorous process as outlined below, using check lists and a variety of problem solving tools to bring to bear on the problem.

Most importantly it often requires commitment from the  top to invest resources and time into setting up a problem solving group and supporting them throughout the process, which can sometimes take weeks or more to resolve. The pay off is always worth it!

Robert