1. You want a safer plant.
2. You know that by eliminating recurring, controllable failures, you can improve your plant's overall equipment effectiveness.
3. You want to systematically eliminate the risk of your plant polluting the environment – but minimize the cost to achieve your objective.
4. Your root cause analysis process is really just another way of assigning blame to people. You want to learn from successful organizations that are beyond playing the blame game and are truly applying root cause analysis.
5. You want to benchmark with your colleagues when to schedule a root cause analysis event and when to let it go.
6. You are ready to quit treating the symptoms of failure.
7. You want to quit wasting money on improvement programs that don't really address problems.
8. You want to eliminate knee-jerk responses to failures, which often fail to address the problem and in many cases break something else in the process.
9. You're thinking about implementing a formal root cause analysis process at your plant, but want to hear from those who've "been there and done that" to make sure it is right for you.
10. You need examples and insights about which of the many methods, training programs, tools and technologies will work best for you.
11. You've received formal training on root cause analysis, but want to learn from the experience of your peers before you "go live" to implement it in your plant.
12. You already have a successful root cause analysis process but are looking for new ideas about how to apply it to problems outside of your normal focus areas.
13. You want to learn about various root cause analysis methods as well as the tools, training and technologies available to support its effective implementation.
14. You want to learn how to connect the results of root cause analysis to your failure modes effects analysis (FMEA), making the FMEA a living document.
15. You want to learn from your peers when it's best to involve a third-party root cause analysis facilitator and/or subject matter experts and when it's best to go it alone.
To learn more about Reliable Plant magazine’s “Root Cause Analysis: Successful Applications for Plant Reliability” conference, visit www.rcaconference.com.