
Fundamentals of Root Cause Analysis podcast episode
The ability to determine the root cause of a failure is a skill. It requires agility, leadership, inquisitiveness, diligence, and technical skill. Successful RCA taps into your creativity and technical prowess. Using a structured approach helps.
There are many challenges when determining the root cause of a failure—the desire to find and implement a solution quickly. Or the lack of resources and equipment being immediately available.
Let’s discuss the common challenges and a few ideas for solving or avoiding these obstacles.
Keeping in mind that some symptoms may mask or share underlying failure mechanisms. Understanding the underlying physics, chemistry, code, and interactions may present a challenge. Creating hypotheses allows for a structured scientific approach to gaining a fundamental understanding of a problem.
Sometimes, a good enough understanding is all you can manage. Let’s discuss when you have sufficient understanding of a failure mechanism to implement a solution. There are theatrical and empirical approaches, along with a bit of creativity, that can help you efficiently conduct RCA.
Overall, a great method to address both the interpersonal and technical challenges is a structured approach to RCA. One method, there are many, is called 8 Disciplines. Let’s review this basic process so you can employ it for your next RCA.
This Accendo Reliability webinar originally broadcast on 12 Dec, 2017.

- Social:
- Link:
- Embed:
To view the recorded video/audio of the event, visit the webinar page.
Related Content
The Anti-Quality Tool: 5 Whys Root Cause Analysis episode
Root Cause Analysis article
Methodologies of Root Cause Analysis article
Root Cause Analysis w/ Bob Latino episode
How Does Your Root Cause Analysis (RCA) Effort Measure Up? article

Fundamentals of FRACAS
This webinar introduces you to the basic elements of FRACAS. Plus, we examine a few failed programs so that you can avoid problems.

Fundamentals of Root Cause Analysis
Let’s discuss when you have sufficient understanding of a failure mechanism to implement a solution and a few common obstacles to avoid.

Essential Reliability Engineering Concepts
Let’s discuss the concept of failures along with a few other concepts universal to reliability engineering.

Preventing Moisture and Corrosion Damage
The goal is to educate the audience on options to prevent electronic equipment failure used in enclosed spaces from corrosion.

What is Fatigue?
Fatigue is interesting in that it allows something to fail without it ever being exposed to stresses that are beyond its strength.

So What is the Root Cause?
This webinar takes you through a framework to explore the understand the root cause of a failure, something we can do something about.

Focus on Failure Mechanisms
Let’s explore the many ways something can fail and how understanding failure mechanisms makes a difference.
Hi Fred, Looks like your audio cuts off around the 8 minute mark
Hi Adam,
yep it does… not sure why yet recut the audio track from the original and uploaded it… seems to be working now. Thanks for letting me know.
It may take up to 24 hours to refresh the hosting server’s buffers and provide the updated file.
Cheers,
Fred