Root cause analysis (RCA) has become a mainstay in many industries – especially for manufacturers.
Root cause analysis is the process of investigating the root causes of why defects are present within a manufacturing process or end product. Many manufacturing professionals only treat an issue’s symptoms, or even its intermediate causes, without fixing the root problem – this inattention to the finer details results in recurring difficulties that could otherwise be easily solved.
When the steps of a manufacturing process are extensive and complex, it helps to have a way to trace issues straight to the origin. Companies can save valuable time and resources by optimizing their troubleshooting system and implementing root cause analysis basics.
All that said, root cause analysis is undergoing a new interpretation in light of the Industry 4.0 and Smart Manufacturing revolutions. With the rise of Predictive Quality and artificial intelligence, it’s natural that manufacturers are progressing to more advanced root cause analysis methods such as automated root cause analysis.
Automated root cause analysis harnesses the power of machine learning – a subfield of artificial intelligence that focuses on developing and researching algorithms that learn from data. The algorithms exist in the form of models which are trained with historical data in a way that allows them to make predictions and decisions based upon new data.
Thanks to significant advances in machine learning and Big Data analytics, root cause analysis can be performed using automated methods. These methods are unbiased and based purely upon historic and real-time data from the production floor, infused with process expertise (more on that later).
Just as importantly, they take the Sisyphean task of analyzing and interpreting data away from the people on the factory floor, thereby enabling them to focus on actually optimizing the processes and improving performance.
In the manufacture of medical devices, pharmaceuticals, food, and dietary supplements, root cause analysis is an FDA regulatory requirement.
Want to learn more? Tonex offers Root Cause Analysis for Manufacturers, a 2-day course where participants learn to identify the cause of a problem, solve it, and prevent it from occurring again. RCA saves manufacturers and system integrators valuable resources, time, and money by optimizing their troubleshooting system and implementing root cause analysis basics.
For more information, questions, comments, contact us.