Deployment

	Root Cause Analysis Deployment

______________

View Criteria for Evaluating Root Cause Analysis Systems.
_______________

Evaluation Pilot Package - Plan and Worksheets (Word .doc file)

Deploying REASON^®

When considering a decision to adopt and deploy root cause analysis capabilities in your organization, ease of deployment will be one of the important issues. It is important because this planning step directly affects your immediate and sustaining success. Ease of deployment is a function of matching your needs and expectations with a deployment strategy that achieves your goals. This fact defines the approach that we have adopted to assist clients in designing a solid plan that assures system success. The key to successful deployment is flexibility that will best serve your special needs, and to match your deployment plans to the unique nature and demands of your company and industry.

Essential Flexibilities List

Flexibility in the system to address all different levels of problems, from day-to-day problems that occur on the shop floor to the major crisis that threatens the bottom line.

Flexibility in the system to address different kinds of problems from operations manufacturing, to quality, to reliability, to liability and claims to safety and the environment.

Flexibility in the interface of the system to accept shop floor input, so that every employee can contribute to the improving quality of the operation.

Flexibility in the training support that meets the differing needs of organizations to properly train and orient all levels within the organization conveniently and cost-effectively.

Flexibility in the system to identify all available prevention and control options, so that management can judge the best and most cost-effective solutions.

Flexibility in the system to tailor and target lessons learned communications, so that data flow is efficiently directed to those who need the particular information as it relates to their responsibilities and tasks.

Example

Although every organization is unique, most find that their training needs are best served through conventional classroom training. It is efficient, straight forward and easy to manage. However, other organizations have special needs and do, by the nature of their business, have a need for training options that traditional classes do not fill. As an example of how flexibility serves success in such cases, let us say that your organization is one with dozens of relatively small operations around the world. Let’s say that it is a sales and service organization with technicians, sales personnel and a small management staff, a service shop, parts department and sales office. You want all employees oriented on the goals of your initiative, but there will be only three individuals at each location who in your plan will be trained as analysts. However, these persons are critical to daily activity and cannot be spared for two days away from the operation. Let’s also say that your corporate staff will be involved in the analysis of any major problem that impact the organization at the corporate level, and will be the hub for managing the program as well.

Now, let’s say that you have worked your way down the above ‘flexibility’ list, and are considering adopting the REASON Root Cause Analysis and Lessons Learned System. It seems to fill your need for global capability, broad problem solving capability, effective data collection and analysis, and efficient communications. You now want to plan your implementation to address your training needs. You will want to target proper training to each level in the organization, and you will want to assure the practical ability to sustain capabilities conveniently at each location over time.

Training Flexibilities

We support the REASON System with highly flexible training options, including on-site training at your location, training at our training center, and a variety of instruction and orientation classes via WebCast.

With the above scenario, here is what we would suggest to you as your available options with REASON. With this flexibility, you could schedule those three busy individuals at each of your many local sites into a WebCast training that would take only a few hours daily at their office until the course was completed. They could maintain their finger on the pulse of their operation while still receiving the training that you need them to acquire to implement your plans. You might schedule a one-hour orientation session on WebCast in which all of your hourly personnel globally gather at their individual worksites for a single, one-hour orientation in which you can speak directly to all and in which they receive a thorough orientation on your plans, goals and their important role in the program. Finally, those corporate staff members can come together at your corporate offices for a planning and training session that will prepare them to conduct analyses on critical events and to manage the program. Our recommendation would be a series of WebCast training classes for your analysts because they are at separate facilities and are needed on the job each day, a one-hour WebCast orientation session for your general employee population because it is not practical to bring them together at one location, and an on-site training at your corporate headquarters for your staff members. In a few days, your global organization is ready to step off confidently into a new capability . . . and, next year when one of those key persons out there in the network of your corporation moves on to other responsibilities or another job, you can have his replacement individually trained quickly, efficiently and cost-effectively through one of our regularly scheduled WebCast Training Sessions.

Success Tips To Maximize Your Program

We jokingly ask clients if they have any employees who are looking for other responsibilities and tasks, along with their current duties, at the same rate of pay. It probably is no surprise to you that we are still waiting for the first positive client response to that question. Here are a few suggestions that will build success into your program, some do’s and don’ts, to establish maximum early momentum and to sustain the success over time:

Define the level of problems that you want addressed by the program, and provide specific guidance on what to do.
Establish criteria for when people are to use the process. Voluntary programs are ineffective.
Set the frequency that individuals will engage the process. For example, in addition to the occasional critical problem issue, you might require each trained supervisor analyst to produce one analysis of an on-the-job problem each month.
Monitor and provide recognition for the problem solving activity and its specific benefits. Employees need to know that the activity is considered important by management. Monitoring and recognition sends all of the right messages.
Make sure you act on the solutions this process generates. Employees need to see tangible results and commitment, not a flow of reports that go unattended or ignored.
Think about and personally talk about your root cause analysis program as a growth path. “Maybe we will start on just those major issues at the job sites, but later with the ability and tools to gather and communicate day-to-day issues on specific jobs from the job-site, every aspect of the operation and every job function can one-day benefit by pinpointing obstacles to efficiency, analyzing the causes, and broadcasting the key information to those with similar responsibilities and job functions. That is our goal.”
During your program planning stage, create a list of your goals and what your expectations are for the activity. Identify what results you will monitor and measure over time in order to determine and judge how well you are achieving your goals, and set up a process for periodically gathering a view of those results. Downstream you will want to relate the management and operations implications and benefits of your program in terms that all with understand and accept.
Make sure that every decision maker in all of your locations and departments understands your goals and the value of the data being produced.
Use the system itself to foster teaming and to provide incentive for improvement. For example, you might establish a project in which several minor issues are analyzed at one location in an effort to pinpoint a shared business process that is negatively impacting many different aspects of the operation, but in ways less dramatic than a crisis; you might bring facilities or sites together in a project to examine problems occurring in a process shared by the sites; or you might create a competition in which each site addresses its most significant operations problem in order to identify the control option that will create the largest amount of savings, or most impact the whole organization.
Procedurally stimulate the program through some activity, program, or communication that self-sustains through its own merits, so that you don’t have to compete for time and resources with other current issues, or come up with some special promotion each time you want to stimulate interest. Examples might be a monthly contest, or a quarterly newsletter that reports on a few problems solved, or a facility-of-the-month award, and so forth.

Corporate Deployment Pilot

Some of you may be thinking about an even larger deployment, one that pushes the problem solving skills and tools out into your global operation at the shop floor level. It is a decision that requires a lot of study, and you may feel that an evaluation process is in order that will provide a base of experience and a view of actual results before such a broad step can be taken. Here too we have applied the principle of flexibility by offering an executive ‘do it yourself kit’ that is designed to help you pinpoint your goals, determine what kinds of results you are shooting for, and to plan a conservative ‘toe-in-the-pool’ pilot that will be geared to provide you with all of the answers you need. Click to download the evaluation pilot package.

We are here to help

Root cause analysis information: 0ur telephone number is 903 236 9973. There will be someone here with the answers to your questions, and counsel born of many years of experience in deploying successful root cause analysis programs for business, industry and government services. We are here to help. To explore your options can be the most important step in your planning and decision process.

Root Cause Analysis Deployment