Root Cause Analysis, 4th Edition

48 Root Cause Analysis: Improving Performance for Bottom-Line Results

to the tune of about $7,000,000 per year in lost production! Just by identifying this

as an undesirable event allowed them to take instant corrective action. By adding a

simple procedure of removing large rocks with a bulldozer prior to bucket wheel

activity, approximately 60% of the problem went away. These types of stories are not

uncommon. We get so ingrained in what we are doing that we sometimes miss the

things that are so obvious to outsiders.

Similarly, in a hospital setting, we were looking at the number of times blood

had to be redrawn in an emergency room of a 225-bed acute care hospital. At the

conclusion of our Opportunity Analysis (to be discussed in detail i ...