5 Why Analysis

By, Amit ShrivastavaHyderabad, India.

Why 5 Why ?

To find the…….

When to Use 5 Why

Complaint from the Client Observation from the Client Recurring Errors First Time Quality Internal Quality Issue Quality System Audit Non-conformances

5 Why Analysis

A cross-functional team should be used to solve the problem

Don’t jump to conclusions or assume the answer is obvious

Don’t be bias Be absolutely objective

General Guidelines Ask “Why” until the root cause is

uncovered It may be more or less than 5 Whys If words like “because” or “due to” are

coming in the answer, move to the next Why

If you don’t ask enough “Whys”, you may end up with a “symptom” and not “root cause”

General Guidelines (Contd…..)

Corrective action for a symptom is not effective in eliminating the cause– Corrective action for a symptom is usually

“detective”– Corrective action for a root cause can be

“preventive”

Example:

Criticism of 5 Why:

We generally stop at symptoms rather than going on to lower-level root causes

Lack of support to help the investigator ask the right "why" questions

Getting right answer for the "why" Different people using 5 Whys, come up

with different causes for the same problem

Criticism of 5 Why (Contd…..)

Tendency to isolate a single root cause, whereas each question could elicit many different root causes

Solution:

Verify the answer to the current "why" question before proceeding to the next.