Knowledge Base · Seeing Problems
How do I run a 5 Whys analysis?
Write down one specific problem, then ask why it happened. Take that answer and ask why again, usually about five times, until you reach an underlying cause you can act on. Use the people closest to the work to answer, because they know what actually happens. Each answer becomes the basis of the next question.
The 5 Whys was developed by Sakichi Toyoda, founder of the company that became Toyota, in the 1930s, and became part of the Toyota Production System. The idea is to peel back layers of symptoms one question at a time instead of fixing the first cause you see.
- State the problem plainly, in one sentence.
- Ask why it happened, and write the answer down.
- Ask why that answer happened, and repeat, usually about five times.
- Work with the people closest to the work, who have the hands-on experience to answer honestly.
- Stop at the underlying cause, then fix that cause.
The book's example starts with an angry customer whose delivery was late. The package did not ship on time because the warehouse was behind on packing. The warehouse was behind because it ran out of packing materials. It ran out because new procurement software kept flagging the order as a duplicate. The software did that because training on it never covered that scenario. A customer service problem turned out to be a training problem.
Stopping after one or two questions would have blamed the warehouse or the shipping team, and the delays would have kept coming.
“It’s a powerful way to stop firefighting and start fire-proofing your processes.”
Continuous Improvement in the Workplace, Ch. 3
Run a 5 Whys in ClarionEX (free in Lite)
Related questions
- When should I stop asking "why?" in a 5 Whys?
- What is root cause analysis?
- Should I use a 5 Whys or a fishbone diagram?
Source: Continuous Improvement in the Workplace, Ch. 3 (Learning to See).