This blog is for all of us who at one point or another faced an issue that needed to be resolved quickly and must not happen again. Are you the subject expert in the area of the majority of issues? Chances are that you are not and even the people that are called experts, technicians, engineers, etc. may not be quite up to it either, but you find out about this way too late. This is a very frustrating, time consuming and of course costly event. There are countless examples of such cases that are all about frustrated customers that continue facing a problem that sub vendors and other third parties could not resolve for them either. For instance the Bulk-Online.com/Forum Forum is such an area where people turn for last resort help. Although, you can do a lot if not all on your own. All it takes is a blank piece of paper, ask five “W” questions and possess the diligence to look at all the details of the issue and the experts will like you for doing a lot of the leg-work research upfront.

In my line of business I get confronted with this phenomenon way more than I think is necessary. Just two weeks ago there was a job site where it took our service technician one trip to make an air blower system work where no fewer than three previous attempts by the end-user, engineering company and original equipment manufacturer did not resolve the issue. I might add that almost six weeks went by in the process. The difference was that the technician listened to all parties and started over from the very beginning of the issue and did not trust the previously collected info without convincing himself about its validity. When all hands go up in the air and people start blaming each other for the trouble at hand, it is time to withdraw and start with a clean slate.

My mentor Ralph T. Buscarello from a renowned machinery analysis company called Update International out of Colorado always said that one needs to ask one key question to start any root cause analysis: “What and when did something change?” What he meant by that is that most issues have a rich history that must under no circumstance get ignored. This is the first of five “W” questions. What you end up with should be a list with possible issues or situations that may have played a role, and / or holds the key to the resolving the problem. Then you must develop possible causes / problems for each of your issues. For each of them you need to ask the second “W” question. “Why and how could this have happened?” By the time you do this to the extent of five levels you will have found the most likely issue. If you do not follow this basic concept you may find yourself confronted with another old saying: Garbage in – garbage out. Your result is just as good as the initial data that went in at the beginning.

I am not suggesting you do all of this work yourself. That would be counterproductive and the opposite is the case; use the previously involved parties and their findings – but ask them to verify and explain their work to you. With just a hint of critical thinking and a great portion of due diligence and determination you will either resolve your problem, or at least have created another path leading up to the problem’s resolution. The reason why a lot of issues do not get resolved is because people are hesitant to spend the extra time it takes to start from the very beginning of a problem. Just do not be one of them.
Ralf Weiser