Root Cause Analysis Analysis

I have been tasked with reviewing and analyzing our corrective actions and root causes.
One of my thoughts is to develop "categories" the "wordy" root causes can be fit into.
Examples:
Failure Mode not defined on PFMEA
Failure Mode defined on PFMEA - Inadequate Controls

I would like to come up with a list of 10 or so categories so moving forward we can assign them to one category. We would then be able to more effectively determine where our system is weak and where to best allocate resources.

Does this approach make sense?
if so, what other categories could be added?

 

For sure..we do identify a "Why Made" and "Why Shipped" root cause

 

I agree. Once you make categories, you then have to feed the monster. Training on what the categories mean. Scrubbing the data for erroneous entries. Here is ncwalker's crazy thought.... assuming you have these root causes electronically in a database or Excel sheets, I think it would be interesting to take them all, or a subset for a period of time, or both, and run them through that word cloud software. Where the most used words are bigger. That would give your graphs AND make the categories at the same time. Never seen it done before, but it would be interesting.

 

I see what you all are saying..and one of our glaring weaknesses is our very poor job of RCA...
I am just trying to find a way to meet a request from on high...

 

Chris,

Here is a little more about what I do and how it applies, http://www.taproot.com/archives/author/chris

Bias as discussed above can occur when the team drives the entire process and have nothing in place to guide the subject matter experts. If I have 5 teams look at a problem and they go in five different directions then whose compass is right? Are the all right but incomplete? Are they all wrong? Did they have a solution in mind when they started? Did they go by gut?

Now I do like Ncwalker's idea, look at what is truly going on in your current data to see what you are not controlling or repairing in a consistent and sustainable manner. Take the number of times you tried to correct "Failure Mode not defined on PFMEA", what were the reasons, what were the corrective actions, were they repeat corrective actions, what process was in charge of keeping this from occurring in the first place? Notice that my guidance has not even tied to our TapRooT root cause tree yet. You have to understand what happened first then you can dig deeper into root causes.