Problem handling practised at a production facility

August 12, 2024
Is the term ‘problem solving’ a misconception in itself? Does it create the wrong picture in our minds right from the start? What are the main phases? What were the answers to these questions at a food production facility recently and how were they put into practise?

Like many essential support elements of any production or service provision system it seems that ‘problem solving’ may have suffered from overcomplication coupled with mixed messaging.

Firstly, the word ‘solving’ seems to have created the impression that we take one swipe and the problem will be gone and won’t come back. This is rarely reality.

Further, many problem solving systems include ‘five whys’ which seems often to be taken literally. Ask ‘why’ five times, the answer to the fifth is what we go after (one swipe as above) and problem is gone! ‘Five whys’ was the name coined for analysis excellence many years ago. There was never the intent that it meant exactly five ‘why questions’ in a straight line.

Lastly a problem isn’t a problem unless there is a clearly defined standard against which the actual happenings can be compared against. Thus defining what actually should have been happening (the standard) can and often does create very interesting conversations. (In fact, the lack of a clear standard can often be the root cause of the problem. That’s a whole other topic we won’t get into now.)

When asked to help a food production facility improve their problem solving the end goal was two internal people able to develop the capability of other staff. The approach was to work with them on designing then practising the training and coaching of a ‘problem handling routine’. Defining, analysing then the solution were the three phases of focus.

Before getting into the three phases, we started with the end in mind. We agreed the primary goal of the routine was to help staff reduce or mitigate the risk of reoccurrence (of the problem) to a commercially acceptable level. To illustrate … There’s no point in spending 10’s of hours on an issue coming up with a $10,000 solution so it ‘never happens again’ if the problem costs the business $500 and the likelihood is twice per year.

Now for the three phases. First, we made sure that the problem was defined visually by a gap. The gap is the difference between what actually did happen versus the standard.

Second, the concept of five whys was discussed then dismissed. It was replaced with a ‘cause map’. A cause map reflects reality. Sure, ask the first why to which there may be one or more answers. For each of those answers ask why again. Again, there may be one or more answers to each. The resulting ‘map’ quickly starts to represent reality. Very few problems have a singular cause line. (If they do then they’re probably quickly resolved at the coal face and rarely need ‘handling’ formerly.)

The third and last phase was the ‘solution’. One swipe was discussed and agreed to not be reality either. (Yes, it satisfies ‘closing out’ in the quality system but remember, closing out wasn’t our primary goal.) One swipe was replaced with ‘cycling toward reducing risk of recurrence to commercially acceptable level’. ‘Cycling toward …’ is reality – things need to be tried and learned from as we can’t be sure what will ‘work’ and what won’t. The timeline of such ‘cycling toward …’ was risk rated based on consequence and likelihood.

By the way, the image that supports this article was chosen because it supports the notion of analysing then clear cycles when handling a problem.

After coming up with the system and developing a learning routine, the routine was practised with two test groups of people on real current problems. Of course we learnt from doing this and adjusted between groups one and two. The two internal people who are accountable for developing staff are now repeating these ‘delivery learning and handling cycles’ on further real issues.

Through practise the routine will be further improved and made permanent (applied ongoing) providing a significant return on investment of human time and effort for the facility.