LSMIKLE2,
Thank you for your question about TapRooT. I believe in honesty and transparency of who I am first before I post.
As a TapRooT Root Cause Instructor with the company that created TapRooT, I wanted to clarify some of the statements written above.
Misconception 1, " Not used often in the UK". Over 6,000 people trained in our courses in Europe alone. This number does not include courses taught by company certified instructors. This number does not include companies working in Europe that were trained in other continents. This does not include numbers of those who have participated as untrained team members in investigations done in Europe.
Misconception 2,"Just good for novices. Experts are fine with 5 why's". Remember, it is not how many questions that one asks, it is what is asked. Some "experts", want to drive the root cause process (no matter which one they use). Driving creates bias and often throws away needed evidence. Shorter investigation does not equal a good one.
Our process is used as a discovery process and has 7 expert systems built into it (Quality Control, Procedures, Human Engineering, Training, Work Direction, Communication). I have yet to see all those experts sitting in a room asking the 5 why's. Thus the number of repeat incidents you see from processes that are driven by the facilitator only or brainstorming.
Misconception 3, "will take you down too many paths or rabbit holes." This is a misconception expressed by many of those untrained, those that want the answer to support their own derived root cause only or sad to say, a misconception sold by competitors.
In some limited cases it is a perception based on not following the trained process. Our root causes are absences of best practices that lead to a causal factor. If one gets scope creep and identifies all the missing best practices that the company has but forgets to stay focused on the one causal factor that they are analyzing, then it is possible to list too many root causes. This is not design issue but an identifier that the person broke a few rules of the process.
One correct concept is that not everything needs a TapRooT done on it. If you decide that a full investigation is not warranted and that root causes are not needed and that the risk of repeat is minor, then no TapRooT suggested or needed.
High Potentials however should be investigated with TapRooT. There is NOT ONE major incident that I have investigated where this was the first time that the Causal Factors had occurred. Which means that this issue should not of occurred if the HP had been investigated using TapRooT or another structured process that guides the team.
Feel free to contact me offline at
vallee@taproot.com