Root-cause analysis

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In science and reliability engineering, root-cause analysis (RCA) is a method of problem solving used for identifying the root causes of faults or problems. It is widely used in IT operations, manufacturing, telecommunications, industrial process control, accident analysis (e.g., in aviation, rail transport, or nuclear plants), medical diagnosis, the healthcare industry (e.g., for epidemiology). Root-cause analysis is a form of inductive inference (first create a theory, or root, based on empirical evidence, or causes) and deductive inference (test the theory, i.e., the underlying causal mechanisms, with empirical data). RCA can be decomposed into four steps: Identify and describe the problem clearly Establish a timeline from the normal situation until the problem occurrence Distinguish between the root-cause and other causal factors (e.g., via event correlation) Establish a causal graph between the root-cause and the problem. RCA generally serves as input to a remediation process whereby...

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