How to Measure Investigation Process Effectiveness Podcast

Often, my TapRooT® root cause analysis course participants ask me how to measure investigation process effectiveness. In this episode of my Real Life Work podcast, I share with you multiple ways to measure investigation process effectiveness. These approaches go beyond a leader’s simple ‘when will the report be ready?’ question.

Investigation Process Effectiveness Measurement Options

Investigating problems, like most work activities, is a process. Have you read my Vital Signs measurement book, sat in on one of my measurement workshops, or simply done a lot of process measurement yourself? If so, you know that processes produce a variety of results with each cycle, and not just one or two. At a minimum, all processes have vital signs that relate to time, cost, quality, morale / teamwork, and safety dimensions.

All too often however, we place too much focus on the time measure. In doing so, we often compromise other results like quality, morale / teamwork, and safety. For example, I frequently see people do poor root cause analysis and write weak corrective actions in order to complete their investigation on time.

Is investigation timeliness the primary measure you focus on? What other investigation process measurement options exist?

LISTEN to my ‘How to Measure Investigation Process Effectiveness’ post as a podcast!

Do You Need to Improve Your Investigation Process?

There are other investigation process measures you can track. If you trend your process measures over time, you will find some great initial indicators of investigation process effectiveness. Problem complexity and other factors will introduce some variation into this data. However, you can always segment your results to help account for such effects.

We really don’t know if, and where, a process needs improvement until we begin to track its core safety, quality, people, cost, and profitability measures.

Read the complete “How to Measure Your Investigation Process’ post here!

Keep improving!

Kevin McManus, Chief Excellence Officer, Great Systems

Please email me your questions at kevin@greatsystems.com