In my March 24th column, I discussed how you should handle audits that point out a minor or "Mickey Mouse" nonconformance. In this column, I am going to look at this from the auditor’s point of view, when it’s obvious that the auditee did not take a nonconformance seriously and didn’t bother to do an honest root cause analysis.

OK, so as an auditor, you issued a nonconformity to your auditee or vendor, and you are hoping that they will review the problem in such a manner that it will be solved, and similar problems will be prevented from happening again. You ask for a formal response, and to your surprise it is nothing more than a restatement of the problem and a promise to do better. You know your auditee is working on a solution, but the response is truly lousy. How do you tell your client politely that the response is not acceptable?

Excuses are second nature

If you were ever tempted to say, “My dog ate my homework” when you were young, then you know that problems cannot be solved with excuses. But it’s human nature to react to a problem with an excuse before accepting it or digging into what really caused it. Likewise in the workplace, corrective actions to problems are plagued with Mickey Mouse root cause analyses that are nothing more than excuses to avoid digging deeper into problems. Let’s review one example.

 Customer order No. 101 arrived two days late to its destination
Sample of root causes to the problem:
• Customer order arrived late
• Operator error
• Failure to meet requirements
• We shipped 20 orders to the customer this year; one late is not too bad
• Two days late is only 1 percent of late deliveries
• Failure to follow procedures
• We overlooked customer requirements
• Employees not trained

The first three samples are just a restatement of the problem. The next five actually look more like excuses. In essence, none of these will help get to the bottom of the problem. It’s almost like telling the doctor you have a headache, and the doctor saying the problem is that you have a headache, and she recommends you take Tylenol. Do you think your headache is the problem? Of course not. So before you dismiss the nonconformity as unimportant or irrelevant, you must accept the problem, stop the excuses, and dig into the real root causes.

It’s surprising what root cause analysis can uncover

One of the more complex human functions is that of problem solving. Although machines and computers can perform complex calculations and routines, simple human functions such as walking among a crowd of people or driving in traffic are still areas that computers cannot conquer. The average person, however, sometimes cannot differentiate symptoms from a problem’s actual root causes unless he’s coached or trained to recognize them. The problem is that most organizations act as if only a privileged few are capable of solving problems.

Let’s go back to the problem of customer order No. 101 arriving two days late at its destination. Here are see some examples of actual root causes of the problem achieved through simple brainstorming:
• The quoting process is not well documented and is controlled by a seasoned employee who holds a large amount of personal knowledge, e.g., shipping to this customer requires additional time due to remote location. When the employee is not around, the process breaks down because the information has not been documented, and nobody else has been properly trained. Although this employee takes a vacation only a few times a year, when this happens, the errors multiply. A severe potential problem exists if that employee decides to leave.
• There isn’t a program in place by which employees are trained upon hiring or transferring. There isn’t a program for succession planning. Although a job description exists, not all tasks have been determined per employee, and not all employees have a backup. When an employee without a backup leaves, some tasks are just not performed. Knowledge is transferred from employee to employee haphazardly. There is no incentive to follow procedures.
• Employee performance is not measured; no performance objectives are in place. There are no specific customer measures such as complaints or on-time delivery. Company measures overall sales and percentage of returns against total sales, but does not review at each specific return.

As you can see, if you opt for making excuses to the simple problem of a shipment being late, then you are forfeiting your chance to find out if there are systemic issues, which are kind of like tsunamis waiting to happen.

Mickey Mouse analysis for Mickey Mouse nonconformities

Another problem is caused when you think the nonconformity is unimportant, and you don't give it any priority. You believe the nonconformity can be simply answered from your desk; you also think that nobody else needs to participate, so you just do it yourself and completely forgo inviting the people who participated in the process to the party—e.g., sales, operations, and shipping.

In deciding that a nonconformity is trivial and doesn’t deserve the appropriate root cause analysis, you have again missed your chance to find out the true root causes, why this happened in the first place, and how are you are going to prevent it from happening again.

But are we supposed to treat every single nonconformity, small or large, minor or major, trivial or important, with the same attention and perform root cause analysis to all of them?

The key is training

If you ask if every nonconformity deserves the same level of root cause analysis, the answer is no. Not from you. Not from your star team. Not from your lean team. But it does deserve attention from the appropriate team.

You cannot dismiss a nonconformity and give it a slipshod root cause analysis just because you don’t have time or because you feel it doesn’t deserve it. But just as doctors don’t take patients’ temperatures or blood pressures anymore (a nurse typically does), you or your star team need not be the only ones to conduct root cause analysis. You must open up root cause analysis training to everyone in your organization—from the most senior executive to the operator on the floor.

If every problem, from small to large, is looked at by employees to discover the true root causes vs. just the symptoms, and how to prevent them vs. how to get them off their backs, then problems will begin to be resolved for good. So everyone must be trained in root cause analysis techniques. Everyone must participate and be given the chance and responsibility to find the root cause of certain problems. After all, a good root cause analysis exercise is best accomplished as a team.

So rather than answering a nonconformity vaguely, try assigning it to some of the people who participated in the process that created it, or to some of the least-used personnel. You will be surprised to see how much information they discover. I have seen people who are not typical quality personnel answering problems and bringing up myriad issues to follow through. Imagine if you give them the tools to distinguish root causes vs. symptoms: You would truly begin to drive your organization toward continual improvement.

Don’t fall into the same Mickey Mouse trap

If you find yourself answering a nonconformity with any of the sample root causes above, then ask yourself, “Can I do better?” Chances are you probably can. But if you feel overwhelmed with so many other things going on around you, then try assigning the nonconformity to another employee and see what he finds. You will institute a true culture of continual improvement and avoid a culture of making excuses.