RCI consultants are called on to facilitate Root Cause Analyses for clients under a variety of circumstances, especially in High Priority Events. Facilitations are appropriate for events that greatly impact an organization due to their cost, on-going disruptions to production, strained customer relations, regulatory compliance and other problem situations.

When facilitating a Root Cause Analysis (RCA) investigation, Reliability Center Inc.'s (RCI) consultants will guide your assigned Root Cause Analysis lead investigator through a PROACT® Root Cause Analysis. The RCA team should consist of a multi-disciplined core group comprised of operations, maintenance and technical personnel and any outside experts you deem appropriate. The RCI facilitator will objectively guide the expertise and efforts of the lead investigator and their team to ensure that RCI’s proven RCA process is followed correctly to ensure success.

What To Expect:
Your assigned RCA lead facilitator will conduct the initial analysis with the guidance of the RCI facilitator. The analysis process begins with assembling the RCA team. Then data preservation and hypotheses verification tasks are assigned to your team members. Once all the data is collected and assembled the team then analyzes it to discover your root causes down to the system roots. Your RCA team then writes recommendations to reduce or eliminate the causes of the problem(s). The entire analysis process is documented in the final report which is prepared for management.

The RCI facilitator will remain available for questions about the methodology throughout the investigation until the RCA is accepted as complete by the team.

Facilitated Investigation advantages:

Best results are attained when the analyses are facilitated by external RCA consultants because they are unbiased, provide “fresh eyes” to look into the problems and have experience leading cross-functional teams. Using an outside consultant offers third party objectivity when unions, regulatory agencies and/or equipment manufacturers are involved in the investigation.RCI facilitators are experts in the field of Root Cause Analysis with proven track records that have resulted in millions of dollars in savings for their client.

RCI examines both the hard and soft issues that are barriers to establishing a reliability environment within a given facility. The assessment report includes recommendations that address solutions to the major stumbling blocks identified by management, and is delivered on the last day at the site. Final assessment usually takes 7-10 calendar days, depending on facility size, with hard copies transmitted within a week after hearing and reviewing management comments.

Overcoming shortages through the use of reliability will substantially improve safety, limit environmental excursions, improve precision operations and produce even higher quality products. What is required are new philosophies that stress bolder approaches that will lead to proportional increases in overall productivity, while at the same time resulting in significant decreases in injuries and business losses.

A RCI Reliability Assessment is a powerful way to uncover those issues that restrain company performance. Often these issues lie beneath the surface so they are invisible to corporate executives. The issues may relate to equipment or processes or they may be organizational. The focus of the assessment is to provide you with information and recommendations about major problems for opportunities so your facility can achieve its performance goals.

Benefits to you and your company:

• Key elements of a plan to exceed expectations of senior management
• A clear picture of impediments to performance
• Prioritized recommendations that consider existing plant workload
• Maintenance and reliability performance comparisons against best practices
• Outsider’s perspective honed by consulting experience in a variety of worldwide industries
• A timely report that is presented before RCI consultants leave the job site

RCI’s Reliability Assessment methods make it possible to extract the most relevant information in a very short period of time. This means that the client is able to review major deficiencies in knowledge, restraining paradigms and facility problems quickly. Coupled with prioritized recommendations the assessment becomes a vehicle for speedy development of a plan to increase bottom line results.

Mentoring is an essential step in creating the infrastructure to make Root Cause Analysis (RCA) an effective established part of doing business in your organization. The PROACT® Performance Process (P³) reflects this step as one that is proactive (Read more about the P³).

Mentoring comes after training has taken place and the student returns to their regular
job activities complete with a full plate of reactive jobs.

Two of the main barriers to a successful RCA process are; no time provided for RCA and the fear of failure (not getting to the correct root causes).

In many cases when training is completed and participants return to work, they are told by management there is no time for them to practice their new RCA skill. Along with this problem comes the fear of failure and what failure might mean as far as consequences to the newly trained analyst. The client company must realize they have a responsibility to their newly trained analysts. They must support them by providing them every resource available to perfect their new RCA skills so they can meet the company’s continuous improvement goals and gain a return on their investment. Because of this issue RCI has added mentoring as a way to help new analysts complete a successful RCA at their facility while at the same time building confidence in their ability to perform many more RCA’s..

The idea behind mentoring is after RCA training has occurred the analyst picks a RCA project and with a certified RCI instructor together they go through the PROACT® RCA process. The RCI instructor will guide the analyst through the steps for a successful RCA outcome.

As the analyst performs more RCA’s successfully they eventually will become an internal mentor helping their peers to become investigators. As this process evolves and RCA’s are completed with recommendations implemented the returns on investment could be 600% to a 1000% or higher per project. The successful RCA returns should significantly assist in gaining management support for providing the time to perform RCA projects.