ABSTRACT

This chapter looks at a very interesting case study concerning a company that had actually solved a problem, but because the company didn't understand how to perform a structured root cause analysis or analyze existing data, it had no idea the problem had been corrected. Solving this problem, the company had also wanted to teach the team how to follow a structured and systematic approach to solving problems. The Problem Solving Roadmap consists of six major sections and seventeen individual steps. Completion of each major section will yield different milestones or deliverables as the individual steps are completed. The first requirement when attempting to solve any problem is to make certain that everyone agrees on the definition of the problem so that each person's focus and understanding of the problem is exactly the same. The problem, as defined by the team, was premature cracking and failure of a mounting rail.