Team to analyze a non conformance

Jim Wynne said:

Short of commiseration, there's nothing anyone here can do to help the OP. The problem is most likely at least two levels above his, and changing the culture can happen only if the person at the top demands it. Many executive horses have been led to cool, clean water and then died of thirst while ignoring it.

Click to expand...

Thing is: this company receives a complaint, if it's related to package it has two possible source: logístic or production, this two departments crate separately investigation about the path that batch took, if they don't find any problem at this path they just don't want to perform a 8D, cause they understand that in the production parameters there wasn't any issue and during the from the logistic side, they say that in the logistic path for that batch, any issue happen that "could be verified"and they also don't want to sit down to start root cause analysis.

Johnny Quality said:

Sounds like your company's approach to problem solving is akin to Salem in the 17th century.

If you lead the problem solving activities refrain from asking "who". Someone here posted a comment on how they threatened to kick people from meetings when the "who" questions were asked and I'm really annoyed I can't find or remember it. How, why and when will get you to the root causes quicker and with less casualties.

Alternatively, you could invest in fireproof clothing.

Click to expand...

Thing is: this company receives a complaint, if it's related to package it has two possible source: logístic or production, this two departments crate separately investigation about the path that batch took, if they don't find any problem at this path they just don't want to perform a 8D, cause they understand that in the production parameters there wasn't any issue and during the from the logistic side, they say that in the logistic path for that batch, any issue happen that "could be verified"and they also don't want to sit down to start root cause analysis.

Mike S. said:

Lots of good input from the regulars so far.

"Physics rarely respects organizational boundaries" is a great quote.

I gotta wonder if the "not me" culture developed as a survival response as a result of seeing people who admitted a mistake or were assigned blame being berated, yelled-at, "written-up" and maybe fired by Management. Fear in the workplace is still, unfortunately, very common.

Click to expand...

Thing is: this company receives a complaint, if it's related to package it has two possible source: logístic or production, this two departments crate separately investigation about the path that batch took, if they don't find any problem at this path they just don't want to perform a 8D, cause they understand that in the production parameters there wasn't any issue and during the from the logistic side, they say that in the logistic path for that batch, any issue happen that "could be verified"and they also don't want to sit down to start root cause analysis.

Then I echo Bev's comment. Doomed.

Graciel said:

Thing is: this company receives a complaint, if it's related to package it has two possible source: logístic or production, ...

Click to expand...

Saying it is related to two possible sources - logistics or production - simply perpetuates the blame game and does absolutely nothing to take steps towards identifying the root cause. If I am bleeding from my finger and it won't stop bleeding, your organization's approach would be to either blame my blood for not clotting or my skin for not healing fast enough. It's a pointless exercise in blame and, in the meantime, I'm still bleeding.

Root cause is about a process not a person...it's about deeds not departments. And sometimes (and this may get me in trouble with some purists out there) root cause is not one single thing, bur rather a perfect storm of actions and outputs that come together. This is why I do like fishbone diagrams for larger issues...we can see how multiple causes can result in the effect.

To say that a root cause is either A or B is simplistic and naive. Life is not just black and white...there is a lovely spectrum of greys. Did it occur to anyone that production processes could be resulting in something that impacted logistic processes? Or that logistic processes need something from production that was never explored?

Sometimes not knowing much about the process can be an asset. In a meeting trying to determine the root cause, I asked a basic question to about how the process was supposed to work. One engineer answered and the second engineer in the room said he though we were doing things differently. This led to more investigation and a discussion of the pros and cons of the two methods.

My question due to my lack of process knowledge led to finding out the two engineers were not actually sure how the process was being run, more investigation, and a discussion if switching to the other method would be helpful. So your lack of knowledge can sometimes be helpful.

So long as not everyone on the team has a lack of knowledge.....