How Fishbone Diagram Root Cause Analysis Works
How Fishbone Diagram Root Cause Analysis Works
The root cause analysis technique called a Fishbone Diagram (or an Ishikawa Diagram) was created by university professor Kaoru Ishikawa in the 1960s as a quality control tool. He published a description of the technique in the 1990 in the book, Introduction to Quality Control.
A Fishbone Diagram (a sample of which is shown below) shows the problem at the head of the fish-like looking diagram and a backbone with major factors that can bring success or failure to the process as the major bones attached to the backbone. In the example below the major factors are:
- Site
- Task
- People
- Equipment
- Control
Each of the major factors then has additional bones attached to that category that outline the cause and effect relationship that may be causing the problem.
You can use many techniques to develop a cause and effect relationship, but people often describe using a 5-Why type questioning process to create the cause and effect bone structure.
Another method that people use to develop the bone-like structure is brainstorming. The team brainstorms the major factors that influence performance (the main bones attached to the backbone). Then they brainstorm potential root causes of the problem for each major performance factor. The team then reviews their potential causes and identifies the “most likely” root cause (or, in some cases, root causes).
The diagram above comes from this article (LINK) that also includes the video below that outlines using a Fishbone Diagram.
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