1/17/2015

Determine The Root Cause: 5 Whys

Determine the Root Cause: 5 Whys

Asking Why? may be a favorite technique of your three year old child in driving you crazy, but it could teach you a valuable Six Sigma quality lesson. The 5
Whys is a technique used in the Analyze phase of the Six Sigma DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) methodology. It is a great Six Sigma tool
that does not involve data segmentation, hypothesis testing, regression or other advanced statistical tools, and in many cases can be completed without a
data collection plan.
By repeatedly asking the question Why (five is a good rule of thumb), you can peel away the layers of symptoms which can lead to the root cause of a
problem. Very often the ostensible reason for a problem will lead you to another question. Although this technique is called 5 Whys, you may find that you will
need to ask the question fewer or more times than five before you find the issue related to a problem.

Benefits of the 5 Whys

Help identify the root cause of a problem.
Determine the relationship between different root causes of a problem.
One of the simplest tools; easy to complete without statistical analysis.

When Is 5 Whys Most Useful?

When problems involve human factors or interactions.
In day-to-day business life; can be used within or without a Six Sigma project.

How to Complete the 5 Whys

1. Write down the specific problem. Writing the issue helps you formalize the problem and describe it completely. It also helps a team focus on the same
problem.
2. Ask Why the problem happens and write the answer down below the problem.
3. If the answer you just provided doesnt identify the root cause of the problem that you wrote down in Step 1, ask Why again and write that answer down.
4. Loop back to step 3 until the team is in agreement that the problems root cause is identified. Again, this may take fewer or more times than five Whys.

5 Whys Examples
Problem Statement: Customers are unhappy because they are being shipped products that dont meet their specifications.
1. Why are customers being shipped bad products?
Because manufacturing built the products to a specification that is different from what the customer and the sales person agreed to.
2. Why did manufacturing build the products to a different specification than that of sales?
Because the sales person expedites work on the shop floor by calling the head of manufacturing directly to begin work. An error happened when the
specifications were being communicated or written down.
3. Why does the sales person call the head of manufacturing directly to start work instead of following the procedure established in the company?
Because the start work form requires the sales directors approval before work can begin and slows the manufacturing process (or stops it when the
director is out of the office).
4. Why does the form contain an approval for the sales director?
Because the sales director needs to be continually updated on sales for discussions with the CEO.
In this case only four Whys were required to find out that a non-value added signature authority is helping to cause a process breakdown.
Lets take a look at a slightly more humorous example modified from Marc R.s posting of 5 Whys in the iSixSigma Dictionary.
Problem Statement: You are on your way home from work and your car stops in the middle of the road.
1. Why did your car stop?

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Determine The Root Cause: 5 Whys

Because it ran out of gas.

2. Why did it run out of gas?
Because I didnt buy any gas on my way to work.
3. Why didnt you buy any gas this morning?
Because I didnt have any money.
4. Why didnt you have any money?
Because I lost it all last night in a poker game.
5. Why did you lose your money in last nights poker game?
Because Im not very good at bluffing when I dont have a good hand.
As you can see, in both examples the final Why leads the team to a statement (root cause) that the team can take action upon. It is much quicker to come up
with a system that keeps the sales director updated on recent sales or teach a person to bluff a hand than it is to try to directly solve the stated problems
above without further investigation.

5 Whys and the Fishbone Diagram

The 5 Whys can be used individually or as a part of the fishbone (also known as the cause and effect or Ishikawa) diagram. The fishbone diagram helps you
explore all potential or real causes that result in a single defect or failure. Once all inputs are established on the fishbone, you can use the 5 Whys technique to
drill down to the root causes.

Take-away Quotation
If you dont ask the right questions, you dont get the right answers. A question asked in the right way often points to its own answer. Asking questions is the
ABC of diagnosis. Only the inquiring mind solves problems. Edward Hodnett

Featured Product Root Cause Analysis Course

With this course you will be able to train anyone in your company on the proper techniques for achieving proper resolution of any type of problem,
whether it be a transactional process, manufacturing issue, medical procedure, or personnel issue.

If You Loved This Article, You Might Also Love

1. Going Beyond the 5 Whys
2. Final Solution Via Root Cause Analysis (with a Template)
3. Categories of Legitimate Reservation Focuses Fishbone
4. The Cause and Effect (a.k.a. Fishbone) Diagram

Tags: 5 Whys, Cause & Effect, root cause analysis

Comments
Karunakar
Details on online is very helpful.
Reply

denice
this site is very helpful. Thank you
Reply

Prof100
Nicely written and very helpful illustrations of the concept. Thanks.
Reply

Rosauro Feliciano

http://www.isixsigma.com/tools-templates/cause-effect/determine-root-cause-5-whys/

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Determine The Root Cause: 5 Whys

So far this is the best of all articles for the moment; it is simple to understand.
Reply

Tanmay Dadheech
Very good way of determining root cause. Great!!
Reply

rob24ertt
Very good examples, simple but very useful to undestand the clue of this tool. Nice article
Reply

krishna
thanks best atricle on the net! :D
Reply

Ken
Great article, too many organisations hide from asking the simplest of questions and also hide from the answer they give..I know a few who
need to read this article.
Reply

Edward
Simple but helpful article
Reply

mizan
great!
Reply

Janix: Philippines
Very helpful, especially in the field of nursing where everything happen for so many reasons. thanks!
Reply

drgerry
Seems to me the 5 why is nothing more than using common sense. Someone has made millions explaining common sense.
Reply

Jason
People may have made millions teaching common sense, but companies have saved BILLIONS applying the common sense that was
apparently overlooked.
Reply

EROL VATANSEVER
5 whys technique is one of the best problem solving techique ever invented
Reply

Kevin Clay
The 5-Why tool is a very useful tool but I find that if you are not experienced with facilitating a 5-Why session for Root Cause Analysis then it can
lead you down the wrong path. Most problems do not have one cause but many interdependent causes. I like to use the Fault Tree Analysis for
RCA. This tool looks at the many dependent and independent causes of an effect.

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Determine The Root Cause: 5 Whys

Reply

Oswald Avio
But the 5 whys method, when rightly used, can result in a horizontal tree-like pattern of causes to which the method can be re-applied.
Remember, it is suitable for a Six Sigma DMAIC project.
Reply

pankaj
5 why analysis is good tools for human error and ishikawa is good tool for root cause of potential defect.
Reply

Ron Villones
When to stop the 5 why? How would I know that I should stop to ask why?
Reply

vijay
Continue the
5 why
process until fundament or root cause is apparent.
Reply

Neo
Nice article. I have been practicing this and it definitely helps to understand the whys of the problem. Also as part of it you first need to understand
what is the problem and where the problem occurs. Is it at a particular time or during an acitvity , then when? This way you can better understand
the problem and get to the root cause of the problem. There may or may not be a fix to the problem, then a solution needs to be applied/devised.
Reply

BIMAL SINGH JAGGI

Very useful website to understand 5 whys effectively
Reply

Jorgy Porgy
The example of the car running out of gas is actually a good example of how NOT to use the 5-Why method. Consider applying the logic used in
this example to problems at your business. The easiest such demonstration of this is if we make the driver in this example an employee whose
job it is to drive a company vehicle. The company vehicle runs out of gas because the employee didnt buy gas before driving, because he didnt
have money, because he lost it gambling the night before, because he cant bluff. So whats the solution? Teach your employee how to bluff? No,
obviously not. The 5-Why was done incorrectly. The 5-Why should be used to reveal a failure of your process, not faults in employees. The 5-Why
*SHOULD* have gone something like this:
Problem The employee doesnt make it to the scheduled task on time because the car stopped in the middle of the road.
1. Why did the car stop? It ran out of gas.
2. Why did it run out of gas? There is no process in place requiring verification that the amount of gas in the tank is sufficient to reach the
destination.
If the employee had done this and realized there wasnt enough gas to reach his destination, he wouldnt have started to drive *KNOWING* he
couldnt arrive on time. The drivers ability to successfully gamble has absolutely nothing to do with this problem occurring. The process should
be set up in a way to prevent it.
I run into this kind of problem all the time while managing corrective action teams. The 5-Why is a great technique fast, efficient, easy to
understand but it takes some thorough thought to keep it from going on weird tangents, and teaching this type of thinking is the challenging
part of problem solving.
Reply

Katerina
This is very nice way to learn about the 6 whys.
Very useful
Thank you!
Reply

debonx

http://www.isixsigma.com/tools-templates/cause-effect/determine-root-cause-5-whys/

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Determine The Root Cause: 5 Whys

Jorgy, I believe the two gas examples (yours and the one in the article) fundamentally differ here. One has the fundamental source of
cash/trigger being the individual whilst yours has the company as the trigger, practically there would not emanate from the same root
cause.
However, both problems applied the same principle of root cause analysis. With that being said, I dont think the analysis was incorrectly
applied.
Reply

Angelina Nunag
This is very useful when teaching laboratory management for future Medical Laboratory Scientists.Thank You!
Reply

koilraj
This helpful for my job.thanks a lot
Reply

Nelson Amade
Nice article. helpful
Reply

srinivasa
These details are very helpful,thank you very much for sharing information
Reply

NEW JOB

DTE Energy Corporate Master Black Belt and CI Manager

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