In honor of Joseph Juran
Sadly, Joseph Juran died in New York on February 28, 2008 from natural causes. He was an astounding 103 years old. Dr. Juran coined the phrase “Pareto principle” after Vilifredo Pareto, an economist who noted that 20% of Italians held 80% of Italy’s wealth. Dr. Juran applied this principle to quality, noting that 20% of causes are responsible for 80% of a problem.
As such, it seems that this would make root cause analysis easier - find 20% of the causes, and we’re 80% done with the problem! In practice, many root causes analyses just stop there. However, Dr. Juran himself recognized this problem, and began referring to the causes as “the vital few and the useful many.” He understood that there is still great value, and perhaps necessity, in determining 100% of causes, not just the “vital few” that are responsible for a disproportionate share of problems.
Doing a visual root cause analysis, or cause map, can assist us in finding the “useful many”. The map allows us to find 100% of the causes, not just those that are obvious or most responsible for the problem. Because the technique effectively draws out these solutions, it ensures that we do not spend 80% of our time finding the most elusive 20% of causes!
Once we’ve found all the causes, we can then assign a solution to each cause. At this point, your organization will prioritize the solutions using the Pareto principle. Obviously in a world of limited resources, the solutions that should be applied first are those that can solve 80% of problems. But it’s important that we ensure that all possible causes and all possible solutions are present in our analysis. To successfully achieve a goal of “zero defects” or “zero injuries”, we’ll have to apply solutions to all the causes.
