From the course: Lean Six Sigma: Analyze, Improve, and Control Tools

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Five whys

Five whys

From the course: Lean Six Sigma: Analyze, Improve, and Control Tools

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Five whys

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- During the analyze phase, after a list of theories of potential causes have been developed using brainstorming, teams use multi-voting to select the most likely theories. Once we have our short list of potential causes, we need to use data to further narrow down our analysis. The tool called five why's can help us navigate this process. But, always remember, decisions must be data-driven. Used in this way, five why's can help us drill down each selected theory to get to root causes. This tool follows a pattern. You ask a why question, then answer it. And then, ask another why question about that answer, and then answer that, and so on. The five in five why's is a reminder to do this about five times if needed. For example, why does it take anywhere from five to 30 days to process the same type of transactions among different offices in the country? Because office Location B has the longest mean processing time, and it has the most variation. Hmm, why are processing times so long…

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