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Root cause analysis

A root cause analysis finds out why a non-conformity, incident or complaint occurred, so you tackle the underlying cause and not just the symptom.

Explanation

In a root cause analysis you keep asking until you reach something you can do something about. An employee slipped; why? The floor was wet; why? There was a leak; why? Maintenance had been postponed. That gets you to the root cause instead of someone to blame.

Commonly used methods are the 5 Whys, the fishbone diagram (Ishikawa) with cause groups such as people, machine, method, material and environment, and fault tree analysis for complex problems. You do the analysis with people who know the work and base it on facts, photos and data.

Do not stop at human error. Ask what made that error possible: an unclear instruction, time pressure, poor tools or a missing check. The outcome is the basis for a corrective or preventive action. Without a root cause analysis you treat symptoms.

Example from practice

A customer complains about a wrong delivery. The 5 Whys shows that the delivery note is retyped by hand. The root cause is the lack of a link with the order form, so the measure is to create that link.

© 2026 BrydgeOne. General information, not legal or other professional advice. No rights can be derived from this explanation.

In BrydgeOne

Where you work with Root cause analysis

Incidents & reportsLog incidents and turn them into follow-up. ActionsFollow up corrective and preventive actions. Quality reportsLog nonconformities and complaints in a structured way.
Knowledge base

Keep reading

Incident investigation: finding the root cause with the 5 whys methodIncident investigation starts with a simple question: why did this happen? If you keep asking it, you often end up at a cause in how the work is organized rather than at the person who happened to be there. Below you can read how that works in practice. Recording and analysing incidents and near missesEvery incident and near miss tells you something about how safe your work really is. You can only learn from it if it is reported, recorded and analysed. This article shows a practical way to do that. CAPA: how to follow up corrective and preventive actions effectivelyCAPA stands for Corrective and Preventive Action. It is how you solve a problem for good and stop it from coming back. This article walks through the route from report to root cause, action and effectiveness check.
Glossary

See also

CAPACorrective and Preventive ActionCorrective actionCorrective actionNon-conformityNon-conformityIncidentIncidentEffectiveness checkEffectiveness check

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