Root Cause Workbook

by Kevin Schmidt

During an incident investigation, an employer must determine which factors contributed to the incident, and both OSHA and the EPA encourage employers to go beyond the minimum investigation required and conduct a root cause analysis.

A root cause is a defining factor or highest-level cause behind a nonconformance. It’s something tangible that you can eliminate through process improvement.

A root cause analysis allows an employer to discover the underlying or systemic, rather than the generalized or immediate, causes of an incident. Correcting only an immediate cause may eliminate a symptom of a problem, but not the problem itself.

A root cause analysis’s end goal is to pull out actions or processes that lay the foundation for incidents and near-misses. Unfortunately (or fortunately), a root cause is usually an inadequacy in the safety system that allows for influencing factors to contribute to incidents.

You will often find that fixing the symptom rather than the root cause is what takes the most time, energy, and resources.

Paperback

Published July 22, 2021

About the author

Hi I just finshed a great rural humor book on 30 plus years of dealing with farmers. Also travels, business meetings the bars afterwords, corp dealer panel and stand up comedy have given me lot of material! thanks Kevin"