Fishbone Diagrams - Why and How

The process of finding out the fundamental flaw or "root cause" as to why a problem or defect has occurred is called Root Cause Analysis. Once such an event is pinned down, it can be planned for probabilistically in the future, and hopefully prevented from reoccurring, or at least have its effects minimized. This is an important component of Design Theory.

Pareto charts, failure mode and effects analyses (FMEA) as well as fish bone diagrams are some of the many tools that have been created in order to carry out root cause analysis. All of these tools are useful but for this for the purposes of this article, the fishbone diagram will be our focus.

The fishbone chart has several other titles like the cause and effect charts, 5-Whys, and the double-why chart. These titles fit well since this tool functions as a method to discover the reason why a certain event occurred.

To complete the analysis, you should identify the effect and work backwards. With this process you will try to determine the cause. In order to identify the cause of the effect, you will need to ask the question "Why did this effect happen?" Several answers may come up and a list will be created. Once you have your list, you will then ask "Why did this cause happen?" for each item you came up with.

Using the "5 Whys" technique will lead to the root cause of a condition. To document what this technique looks like, the condition being investigated is listed on the right side of a piece of paper or on a display. Draw a horizontal line to the left. Ask "why" the condition occurred and note on a line coming off the horizontal line at a tangent the answer to "why". Continue doing this until 5 Whys are asked. The tangent lines will resemble a fishbone which is what this process is frequently called.

An illustration of a 5-why chain for a business which has recently lost a client is coming after this. The business lost its client because the price was too expensive. The price was too expensive because the assembly procedure took more time than it was supposed to. The assembly took too much time because the employees didn't have the right tools. They didn't have the right tools because they weren't purchased. The tools weren't purchased because the higher management wanted to spend less money for this quarter.

Once the root cause has been exposed, steps can be taken either to ensure that root cause will be avoided the next time if the end effect was negative, or that it happens again if the effect was positive. If the root of a problem is not properly identified, only the symptoms of the problem are treated rather than the cause itself. Such practices can lead to excessive costs, reduced quality, slow delivery, or all three.

Root Cause Analysis is the process of finding the fundamental reason why some event or defect occurred. The reason people are interested in such a process is that identification of the reason for an event increases the chance that the event can be caused or prevented in the future.

Steve Wilheir is a project manager. Learn more about the fishbone chart and fishbone diagram and how to conduct a fishbone analysis of your organization's teamwork issues.

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