Root Cause Analysis Tools and Resources

“Mark, It was an absolute pleasure to see you deliver the BFA course yesterday.

The manner in which you made the topics come to life with your experiences and knowledge was great to behold. You continuously connected with the audience and had them engaged for the entire day! (Which is a bit tough to do especially after lunch). Your wealth of experience and knowledge throughout the day really helped in bringing the participants to the understanding of the PROACT methodology and the concepts that were covered in the BFA. “

I just wanted to say how much I appreciate your company and the products you offer. We’ve incorporated your RCA Methodology into our business and are having a very smooth roll-out. I would like to especially recognize John Bartlow as being a “5 star asset” to your organization. In my opinion, he defines “excellence” within customer service. I look forward to tremendous success working with you guys, just as I’ve had success in the past.

“I just had to take a moment to let you know I really enjoy your posts! You are a true thought leader who is inspiring, engaging, knowledgeable and also resourceful. You constantly challenge my thoughts on risk management and give me ways to improve my practice. Your posts are truly among my favorites. Thank you for sharing and thank you for being a role model”.

The Latino brothers have been trail blazers in Root Cause Analysis for as long as I have known them. They have been particularly visionary in pioneering the inclusion of Human Factors into this field, via the PROACT methodology, over the past decade and a half. As always, their vision has been right on target!

“I had the pleasure of working with the extremely knowledgeable and talented Reliability Center Inc. (RCI) staff while using their PROACT methodology to successfully identify the root causes of several significant equipment failures. The techniques utilized to analyze the events resulted in generating excellent  reports that were thorough and understandable.

Every company would benefit from utilizing RCI and their methodologies.”

A technique that allowed us to fix a chronic processing problem that plagued one of our gas plants for more than ten years. If not for this technique, we would still be “fire fighting” this problem today.

Your work (Reliability Center) has helped Cliffs Natural Resources to learn from their failures. The training and consulting in root cause analysis (RCA) has helped Cliffs pinpoint the underlying reasons for problems and paved the way to develop strategies for improving performance.  Your (RCI) efforts have allowed Cliffs to have significant and widespread financial benefits. These efforts have specifically resulted in improved production, increased maintenance precision and improved business focus.

“I had the opportunity to attend the Reliability Center’s (PROACT) Lead Investigator course in 2012 when we used “super users” to perform RCA’s on high impact incidents. One of the things I most enjoyed about that course was the time spent on the investigative process and the formality of evaluation of evidence based on facts in evidence. While that sounds a tad like a criminal investigation, the course is really about instilling the formal processes necessary for exploration and understanding. To your ‘wheelhouse’ we had a wonderful three days where we did nothing but evaluate and hypothesize the failure mechanisms for an array of mechanical components, shafts and bearings. From the perspective of understanding failure to institute system resilience, I can’t honestly say enough good things about the course. I also don’t think we’d find a more experienced team in performing these analyses than exists with the Latino family whose father started the business long before it was a fashionable practice. From my reading and experience, I would put Mr. Latino on par with Dr. Deming, Joseph Juran and others who pioneered the quality movement. Simply stated, whatever platform is used to collate and present the findings will only be as beneficial to our cause as the preparedness of the investigative team.”

Ron Butcher
Director of Health and Safety
U.S. Competitive Generation
AES