RCA2GO: Timeline before
RCA2GO, as its name suggests (Root Cause Analysis), fully supports the construction of a Causal tree, which helps the investigative team in your company come to the root cause(s) of a problem. In addition to this, RCA2GO offers a wealth of other powerful investigative tools, not commonly seen, that help your team understand not only whys but also whens.
Timelines of events
RCA2GO supports both Timeline before and Timeline after. Timeline before comes with a toolkit that helps you establish and then analyse the series of events that happened before the Problem (or Top Event). Similarly, Timeline after comes with a toolkit that helps you record all events that follow (and maybe still follow) the Top Event.
But wait a minute: shouldn’t the Root Cause Analysis be about the causes? Anyone who has worked as a team member on a Root Cause Analysis (RCA) can confirm that RCA, being thorough in causal exploration, often produces massive trees consisting of dozens of branches and hundreds of causes, in which only one or a couple of branches end up leading to the satisfactory result.
The timeline helps clarify the picture and build better causal trees. Rather than dwelling on theoretically possible causes alone, the timeline focuses on real events that did occur, and on actions directly related to those events. A clear sequence of real events and actions is particularly useful for analysing one-off top events, which often have significant consequences, or worse.
Although called one-off problems, they can easily "replicate themselves" in any similar environment. What happened in one plant or driveway can also happen in any similar plant or driveway within your organisation. Like in this example shown in the video below.
RCA2GO Timeline feature video: A train collided with the trailer of a truck.
Click video to play it.
To illustrate Timeline before and Timeline after, we have constructed a possible scenario of major events that led and followed the accident, of a train colliding with the trailer of a truck at a crossing. Although it occurs in suburban Australia, this problem can be replicated in any similar set of events and environments, and it is a very dangerous issue.
Timeline before: construction
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1. Launch Timeline before
In RCA2GO, every issue has a dedicated toolbar. Each icon or button in the toolbar is a shortcut the most commonly used tools, which help you solve the issue as efficiently as possible. As the screenshot shows, 12STEPS issues (or issues which were escalated to a full 12STEPS Root Cause Analysis) come with dedicated buttons for Timeline Before, Timeline after, Cause tree and Consequences tree. Click on Timeline before.
NOTE: All this is shown in the video, but we will explain here why the Timeline was constructed as such.
2. Consider what event lines should be exploredWhen launched for the first time, the Timeline before contains only the box for the Top Event (or the Problem statement). That box is the central point of our investigations for building timelines and cause trees. To begin a Timeline before, consider what happened and what “players” were involved in the incident. To begin adding events, click on the (+) button on the Problem statement box. |
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3. Begin constructing the timelineFor a simple problem, we may have only one event line, but for a problem like a train collision with the trailer of a truck (at the crossing), we will begin analysing events related to the
1. train, |
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4. Develop the timelineTo establish a sequence of important events, we collect data via interviews, exploring computer and paper logs, maintenance schedules, properly dated reports, files, eyewitness testimonies, instruments and sensors’ records, phone call logs, etc. Some events might have specific times recorded, while others may only provide a general timeframe. Use Timeline to input and capture as much information as possible right away, before the people involved start to lose track of the details. |
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5. Revisit and expandIn this example, after the initial analysis, the investigators have collected some data that helped construct three event lines, for the 1. train, 2. the crossing and 3. the truck. However, a few days later, in the hospital, the train driver reported feeling flu-like symptoms after leaving the station. He also mentioned calling the control center to inform them about it. Considering that it might impair his vision or cause lag in decision-making, that event was added between two other events. This is an example of how the timeline may be expanded with events you learn about as your investigation progresses. |
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CONCLUSION
Many accidents in any organisation can be illustrated with a similar scenario, in which we
A. have several independent lines of events developing,
B. event lines colliding at one point, called the Top Event (or simply, the Problem),
C. developing further, producing a set of (unwanted) consequences.
We want that A) events like this, B) the problem and C) its consequences, never occur again. In the next article, we’ll dwell on features of the Timeline in more detail.
