People don't participate in root cause analysis

Just to clarify - is your employer not doing any root cause analyses, or are they doing root cause analyses and you want to be on the team to do the root cause analysis and "they" won't let you? As an observation, where I worked you had to be "qualified" in root cause analysis, and do a few "under instruction" to get to be assigned to do them.

Go and talk to your Quality Manager to express your concerns

Are those participating 'trained' or have relevant experience in dealing with root cause analysis? You'd be surprised at how many people can't write basic 'to the point' reports & facts when dealing with NCRs, I swear I spend more time getting the correct information from people than I do dealing with the corrective actions (when required) most of the time.

It seems to be a cultural thing, in my last organisation, works managers responded to NCRs from quality readily, where as in my current organisation, it's a head ache just to try and get a reply to an email most of the time, some worse than others.

Me & my Quality Manager took it to the Director's quarterly review meetings to voice our concerns, where it flows down from there. I'll be honest not much has changed and if anything seems to be worse. It's just one of those things. I would personally be much more stricter & heavy handed with my approach but I'm not the manager so not my call.

Based on the title of the post, I'm assuming (correct me if I am wrong) that you cannot get others to participate in the RCA activities. If so, you are not alone. Sometimes it is like pulling teeth, and a problem I have experienced for many years.

In my experience, sadly, the root cause is usually top management not providing adequate resources and not prioritizing quality. People are so %@8^ busy all the time and the focus is usually more on shipping out more stuff, not better stuff. Often only the threat of the customer or the outside auditor raising heck will be enough to force their participation.

Root cause analysis is very much a finger-pointing avoidance so make sure you look at root causes holistically rather than personally as much as possible.

Sometimes it is a bad culture, but I have often found that it is more a matter of them not knowing what is expected of them. Problem solving does not come naturally to most people, and they need guidance. Let them know that while they still own the problem and the solution, you will help them through the process. It won't work all the time, but it will more often than not.

In my experience, less than 10% of people are natural problem solvers. The rest need differing levels of guidance.

Miner said:

Sometimes it is a bad culture, but I have often found that it is more a matter of them not knowing what is expected of them. Problem solving does not come naturally to most people, and they need guidance. Let them know that while they still own the problem and the solution, you will help them through the process. It won't work all the time, but it will more often than not.

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I do this, but when it comes down to brass tacks, at the companies I have worked at and worked closely with for the past couple decades, no one ever works OT (especially on weekends!) to get a CA done on time, but they work OT every friggin month to get more dollars shipped. YMMV.

One problem I see in RCA's is folks do RCA's on the "wrong thing". It always is in response to one individual incident. That may be good if it was a "one-off" (or special cause event). But if the event was a result of the process / system, and lots of other instances of similar incidents exist, then you need to do the RCA on the entire set of related events, preferably to include an RCA on the systemic (aka common) causes that create these multiple events.

Pretty much what Miner said above. I would also add, you need to sell it to your participants. RCA, although it may be painful, is actually designed to make life easier. So focus on that. AND don't do RCA on every little problem. Sometimes you can just fix the problem. Leave RCA for the "life changing" events. You'll get more buy in.