Root cause analysis

Definition

A generic problem-solving methodology employed to determine the fundamental causes (root causes) of events that have an impact on safety, health, environment, quality, reliability, or production. Such systematic investigations help identify ‘what, how, and why’ something happened so that recurrence might be prevented

Description

Events rarely have a single root cause. Thus, it is critical that a Root Cause Analysis (RCA) team does not ‘jump to judgment’ and that a sufficiently thorough investigation is made to be reasonably certain that all underlying causes have been identified and that relevant, but non-causal factors, have been filtered out during the RCA process.