One of the many reasons an organization might examine one of its business processes is to try to track down the cause of a problem. Perhaps an organization has noticed that there is an increase in complaints from customers who feel that they have been sold an inappropriate product, and therefore the sales process is put under the microscope. Conducting this type of analysis can be very illuminating, and will often help us generate many opportunities for improvement.

It is very easy to implement localised solutions to process problems. Yet if we do this, we risk simply ‘moving’ the problem elsewhere. In this e-book, we discuss the problem of root-cause analysis and provide practical examples of how root cause analysis can be conducted.