© 2004 Cayman Business
Systems
Rev:
Pre-G3 - Rendered Thursday,
February 12, 2004
Symptoms vs. Causes
•It is not uncommon for problems to be reported as
symptoms. More examples are: noise, won’t
work, no power, machine down, broken tool, head froze up, contaminated, rough
surface, porosity,
shortage of parts, rattles, quality problem, worn out, line stopped, not to
specification, labour problem, management problem, too much variation, etc.
•
•The
problem solving team must use a systematic approach
to define the real problem in
as much detail as possible. A definition of the problem can best be developed using approaches that
organize the facts to get a comparative analysis. These approaches do this by asking what ‘is’ against what ‘is not’. Then
they draw distinctions from this comparison, testing these against the problem definition
and forming a statement or description of the problem which must be resolved.