Advice Counts By Mike Kunkel
profitteammike@gmail.com
Getting to the Root of the Problem W
e spend a lot of time on problem solving in our industry.
I used to tell people that I had 17 dif- ferent problems that I dealt with in run- ning a facility. I never knew which of them I would be dealing with that day but they would be on that list of 17. You looked at the problem and dug to the bottom of it. You quickly fixed it and then tried to make sure something was done to keep it from happening again. Yet, sometimes it would. Sounds like a normal day doesn’t it?
Someone gave me an article by James J. Rooney and Lee N. Vanden Heuvel that was published in the July 2004 Quality Progress magazine. It has helped me as a consultant. Maybe it can help you become a better problem solver, too.
Root Cause Analysis
The article, titled “Root Cause Analysis for Beginners,” defined it as:
“Root Cause Analysis (RCA) helps iden- tify what, how, and why something hap- pened, thus preventing recurrence. Root causes are underlying, are reasonably identifiable, can be controlled by man- agement and allow for generation of rec- ommendations. The process involves data collection, cause charting, root cause identification and recommendation gen- eration and implementation.” The article explains in a detailed graph- ic charting 38 steps how a grease fire destroyed a residential kitchen (it is worth a look). Upon completion of the article, I thought that is exactlywhat we do on a daily basis, but somehow manage
problems to reduce it down from 38 steps that require committees to a few minutes to address it, fix it, and move on. When I was in school, root cause was called business cases and problems. You had to identify symptoms of the problem and actual problem to make sure you treat the problem not the symptom. Once again, this sounds like our daily life. The article’s authors explain that the RCA is a four-step process involving the following:
• Data collection. • Causal factor charting. • Root cause identification. • Recommendation generation and implementation.
“The end result of an RCA investigation is generally an investigation report,” according to the authors. “The analyst must be willing to probe the data first to determine what happened during the occurrence, second to describe how it happened, and third to understand why.” “However, if the recommendations are not implemented, the effort expended in performing the analysis is wasted. In addi- tion, the events that triggered the analy- sis should be expected to recur,” they say. What that means for auto recyclers is that you have to take time to investigate, to chart out the facts, to share the facts with your team, and put preventative measures in place to reduce the liklihood it will occur again. A worthwhile exercise if you think about how much time your one of 17 problems takes out of your day. Read full article at
http://asq.org/ quality-progress/2004/07/quality-tools/
root-cause-analysis-for-beginners.html.
Mike Kunkel has 35 years’ experience in the auto industry, with 20 years serving as general manager of a salvage facility. He is immediate past president and a founding member of TEAM PRP, a noted speaker, and past chair of the Used
Parts Committee at the Collision Industry Council. His ex- pertise is streamlining processes and maximizing the rev- enues per employee, measuring historical data when buying to build a growth/profit strategy, and the Pinnacle system.
22 Automotive Recycling | January-February 2016
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