Quality Minute: RCA

Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is a technique that helps you understand how and why problems occur.  Once you develop understanding, you can take action to address the sources of problems instead of just treating symptoms.

What is a Root Cause?

• A specific underlying cause of a problem
• Can be reasonably identified
• The organization has control to fix
• Effective recommendations can be made to fix

The RCA Process

1. Collect the data
2. Chart the causal factors
3. Analysis
4. Identify the root causes
5. Make recommendations
6. Implement recommendations

Primer
I recommend this primer to help you get started with RCA:
Root Cause Analysis for Beginners by James J. Rooney and Lee N. Vanden Heuvel

Resources
I put these resources together to help my teams perform RCA:
RCA policy
RCA procedure
RCA interview template 
RCA map