Process improvement project - Analyze -
Also known as Cause & Effect Diagram.
A useful way of grouping and presenting ideas from a brainstorm
What are the possible causes of this effect?
This is similar to Affinity Diagram, and uses post-its, but has a narrower more focused issue statement
STEP 1 -
Create your categories of Causes. Examples are People, Equipment, Method, Materials and Environment
fish-bone diagram
STEP 2 -
Using a shape similar to a fish skeleton, place your Issue statement in the head of the fish on the right side. You can phrase it as a question e.g. “What are the causes of…”, or “Why does this occur?”
STEP 3 -
Depending on the number of categories listed in step 1, add the number of fish bones and insert the headings
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STEP 4 -
Place the brainstormed ideas (causes) under the categories
STEP 5 -
For each possible cause, ask the question “why does this happen?” List the responses off from the brainstormed ideas in step 4 to create smaller bones
STEP 6 -
To help with the previous step, use the 5 Whys tool to help
STEP 7 -
Now the diagram is complete, look for possible causes that appear repeatedly, and to identify where you need to gather data as a measurement
STEP 8 -
As you measure the data for each cause, you can update the diagram to indicate if it is a True cause, or not. A Scatter diagram is useful to complete this step.