Understanding the root cause of an issue
In medicine, a good doctor needs to understand the difference between treating the symptoms and curing the condition. For instance, prescribing medications to a patient with a broken arm will just soothe the symptoms; surgery is likely the best option to help bones to heal. Root cause analysis (RCA) is a systematic process that’s used to identify the fundamental cause of a problem. It tries to determine the root of the problem’s fundamental cause by following a predetermined sequence of procedures with the use of the appropriate tools. Thus, we may ascertain the following:
- What happened?
- How did it happen?
- Why did it happen?
- What appropriate measures should be taken to stop it from happening again or to lessen its impact?
According to RCA, an action in a particular place triggers another action in another place, and so on. We can determine the origins of the problem and how it evolved into the symptom...
