when bad things happen to good people

When I posted last week about risk assessment, it reminded me how often in spite of our good intentions, bad things still happen; companies that don't plan ahead not withstanding.

Permanent corrective action is the goal of problem solving however, it’s not always found on the path of least resistance. Too often a cause is diagnosed early and the ‘problem solving’ ends only for the issue to rear its ugly head down the road in the SAME product or in a similar product line. Thorough understanding and definition of the problem, the *multiple* causes, and exploration of solutions is critical in the development of long term corrective actions that will provide your customers with the highest quality products & services.

Whether or not an ‘8D’ is required by the customer, this tool provides the basics of issue identification, isolation, short and long term solutions, as well tying actions to existing company procedures.

It's a great tool to lead you through the basics of problem solving: define the problem, find out what you don't know, determine the root cause, analyze risk on actions to prevent the root cause, then after implementing, fix areas with risk for similar failure. Focus on the complexity of issue identification and resolution are the basics of the 8D method. Ideally you will pull in other tools such as the Ishikawa Diagram, 5-Why, and Kempner Tregoe tools simultaneously to enable your colleagues to identify multiple root causes and thus close the loop on all issues in question.