What is the Five Whys Analysis?
The Five Whys approach for root cause analysis is an approach developed by Toyota to identify and address root problems. The idea in the Five Why analysis is that for every problem there is the most apparent problem – the surface level one that is readily apparent – but also a series of underlying issues that lead to the specific event occurring. The idea is that for every cause identified, you ask the question ‘why did that happen’. Toyota’s logic is if you ask this five times, you will end up with the ultimate issues.
When is the Five Whys Analysis useful?
One of the real dangers when there are a lot of issues cropping up, is that firms going into a fire-fighting mode – spending most time dealing with the specific issues than preventing them from occurring again. Like with whack-a-mole, where no sooner is one ‘mole’ addressed, another one pops up, a failure to get a handle on the underlying issues means that there is a constant stream of problems that the company faces.
Adopting a mindset to identify the root cause of issues is important to developing processes that set the firm up for future growth. When a company is small it may be able to deal with a steady stream of problems – but as the company grows, if the underlying issues are not resolved, this stream of problems can exponentially increase. Getting to the bottom of the problems can help avoid this – investigating what not only lead to this specific issue but what was the cause of that problem.
Example of applying the Five Why’s Analysis
Problem: The customer’s use of the product results in it failing too soon
- Why?: The customer is not using the product as intended
- Why?: The customer did not know how that they should be operating it
- Why?: Only limited training was provided to the customer as to how to use it
- Why?: Our internal training team did not make a site visit
- Why?: Due to rapid growth, the training team is now understaffed, and not able to devote as much time to each customer as originally envisioned.
As illustrated in the above example, the idea with Five Why analysis is not to stop at the most apparent problem. It would, for example, be possible to blame the reasons for an issue that the company is facing on the most immediate issues – the fact that the customers are not using the product right, and so that is why defects were occurring.
This however is unlikely to address or prevent the underlying issues from occurring again – if you were to stop at that point in the analysis, at best you may be able to prevent that specific issue (potentially explaining to that one customer how to solve), but it is unlikely to solve other issues or the set of problems that may arise if the firm is no longer providing sufficient training on how to use the product to the customers.
Final thoughts: Is it always the 5th why?
The key insight with the Five Whys analysis is not that the problem is necessarily discovered on the 5th level – it may be the 3rd, 4th or even sever layers deeper. The key thing is to get into the mindset of attempting to find the underlying issues, and then by addressing them at that level, helping to avoid a whole set of related issues that can arise.
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