Root Cause Analysis Explained

What Is Root Cause Analysis?

Root cause analysis (RCA) is defined as a systematic process for identifying the root causes of problems or events and an action plan for responding to them. Many organizations tend to focus on or single out one factor when trying to identify a cause, which leads to an incomplete resolution.

Root cause analysis helps avoid this tendency and looks at the event as a whole. Another common occurrence is for companies to treat the symptoms rather than the actual underlying problems contributing to the issue, leading to recurrence.

Using root cause analysis to analyze problems or events should help you tackle the primary goal of determining:

• What happened
• How it happened
• Why it happened
• Actions for preventing recurrence of the issues

In the end, root cause analysis boils down to three goals. The first goal is just as the name implies: to discover the root cause of a problem or event. The second goal is to understand how to fix, compensate for or learn from issues derived from the root cause. The third and most important goal is to apply what you learn from the analysis to prevent issues in the future.

How to Conduct a Root Cause Analysis (RCA)

Root cause analysis can be used in a variety of settings across multiple industries. Each industry might conduct the analysis in a slightly different way, but most follow the same general five-step process when investigating issues involving heavy machinery. This process was laid out by the United States Department of Energy (DOE-NESTD-1004-92) back in 1992. Root cause analysis is commonly referred to as detective work at its finest. You'll see similarities between how a detective works to solve a case and how manufacturers can figure out the root cause of an issue in the five-step process.

Phase 1 - Data Collection