5 Whys root cause analysis; Solving Root Cause not Symptoms; Asking why?

5 Whys root cause analysis is a powerful but very simple tool to help you in solving root cause not symptoms of a problem, either in your business or in any other walk of life asking why can lead you to the root of a problem. Far too often in our businesses we tend to address the symptoms of a problem rather than addressing the true root cause of it, because of this the problems fail to go away and just reappear again at a later date. Asking WHY five times can help you reach the root cause of a problem allowing you to prevent re-occurrence.

Use the 5 Whys for root cause analysis and stop wasting your time putting sticking plasters over the problems to fix them for a day or two. By addressing the root cause of a problem you prevent it from re-occurring, saving yourself time and money.

Too often in our businesses we spend our time asking why this problem has happened again, why it didn't go away after we fixed it last week, five whys will help you to remove these repeating problems by curing the root cause.

When something goes wrong we typically witness the symptoms of the problem, the defects at the end of our production line or the failed machine. The cause of the problem is not always so obvious and far too often we jump to conclusions regarding what those causes are typically grabbing at another symptom of the original as being the root cause as we don’t investigate “deep” enough.

For instance a teenager may blame their oily skin for their spots and buy many lotions and creams to cure the oily skin, but why have they got oily skin? They are only tackling yet another symptom of the underlying problem so they will never truly cure the issue.

Root cause analysis using the 5 Whys will help your drive continuous business improvement.

The 5 whys originated within the Toyota Production System and is an integral part of Lean Manufacturing, Kaizen and even Six Sigma. Taiichi Ohno saw the 5 Whys as a very important part of Toyotas overall philosophy.

Like that annoying kid that keeps asking “why” when you give him an answer until you get to the point of just saying “because” when you run out of steam, 5 whys is a very simple method to use to drill down through the layers of symptoms to get to the root cause.

The process is simple just ask why 5 times in succession to get to the true root cause of the problem as per the pictures below.

The criticisms of 5 whys are many but to be honest they are missing the point behind the ideas of using 5 whys, the idea of the 5 whys is to instill the discipline of searching for the true root cause behind something.

In the example above we could still continue asking why a sixth or even seventh time and investigated the maintenance routine of the machine and so forth. The point is not to stop at 5 whys, 5 was only used as it was typically enough to reach to the true root cause, however there will often be occasions when you need 6,7 or even 8 to reach the true root cause, the point is to keep investigating to the point that you tackle the real cause.

The other problem is that different people follow the process they may come up with a different why, sometimes there are multiple symptoms and causes of a problem especially with more complex problems, at this point we try brainstorming and fishbone diagrams to try to determine the root causes, but again questioning each potential root cause to see if it is truly the root cause.

It is the discipline of searching for the root cause not tackling the symptoms that is the strength of the 5 whys technique, it is not meant to be taken as a literal 5 step tool for individuals to use to get to the root cause every time.

It is not enough in business to wait for a problem to occur and then tackle those problems, if you want to succeed then you have to have a planned process of continuous process improvement. 5 whys is a very good tool and discipline to instill in your people but it must be used within a planned framework of improvement.

What findings you derive from using 5 whys you should look to implement across other similar processes also, if lack of maintenance is causing problems on one machine the chances are that it causing problems elsewhere also. If one department’s skills with customer communication are causing issues with delivery what communication issues are causing problems in other departments?

Improvement never ends if you want to succeed!

In addition to using the 5 Whys root cause analysis there are a host of other quality tools that can help you with your continuous process improvement and help you to eliminate the true root causes of your problems;

PDCA; Plan, Do, Check, Act, is a technique to help you plan your improvement activities, without a plan you will flounder in your attempts to eliminate the root causes of your problems.

Tally Charts are a very useful and simple tool for data collection and can be used to collect data on both symptoms and causes enabling you to focus on the true problems at hand.

Histograms can be used to graphically represent your data to make easy visual analysis of possible root causes of a problem.

Pareto Analysis; to highlight the vital few causes that impact the many by using the Pareto principle or 80:20 Rule. A Pareto chart of your issues can help you to spend you time using the 5 whys in the right area to make the biggest impact on your business.

Brainstorming and Mind Mapping, to generate ideas and organize them. These techniques can even be utilized through your company intranet or on the internet to conduct a virtual brainstorming session or to do mind mapping online. These sessions can help you better understand some alternative whys when you do your 5 whys analysis.

Fishbone Diagram or Ishikawa Diagram can show diagrammatically cause and effect in a simple manner allowing you to focus your 5 whys problem solving in the right area.

Process mapping is used to highlight all of the wasteful steps in a process, also Value stream mapping to highlight the waste in the whole business. Once you have those steps identified you can use the principles of 5 Whys to try to eliminate them.

Statistical Process Control (SPC) Charts are used to measure and monitor the process output and parameters, when these charts show that your process is out of control you have an ideal opportunity to use your 5 whys root cause analysis tool to find the real reasons.

The following links will help you with regard to understanding and implementing quality tools and continuous quality and process improvement;

Chartered Quality Institute (CQI); The Chartered Quality Institute is a professional body dedicated to quality, you can join their ranks as an individual or as a company and gain access to their publications and other support.

American Society for Quality (ASQ); The American society for quality is the US version of the CQI, they can give you plenty of advice and help on subjects such as the 5 Whys and other ways to get to the root cause of a problem.

Lloyds Register Quality Assurance (LRQA); Lloyds Register Quality Assurance is a certification and training body who can help you in many ways from general quality training to specific ISO 9001 training.

British Standards Institute; The British Standards Institute much like LRQA can help you with quality training and auditing of your processes..

American Standards Organization; The American Standards Organization can help you in much the same way as the two UK equivalents I have listed above.

Quality Institute of America; Quality Institute of America is the equivalent of the CQI in the UK and can offer much support in all areas of quality management.

Quality Institute in Healthcare; Quality Institute for Healthcare is an alternative to the general institutes with the growing push towards lean and quality techniques in the healthcare industries.

Institute for Manufacturing (IFM); The Institute for Manufacturing is located in Cambridge University and has many links with Industry. They can offer support in a host of different areas related to quality improvement and lean manufacturing.

These links will help you with finding out about the 5 Whys root cause analysis and other quality tools for continuous business improvement.