Five Whys Should Be As Many As 20 Whys

Marcie (not his real name), the production manager, is at a loss trying to solve a recurring issue in their factory. Their problem? Constantly late delivery of their products to customers by an average of three days.

- REY ELBO

Marcie (not his real name), the production manager, is at a loss trying to solve a recurring issue in their factory. Their problem? Constantly late delivery of their products to customers by an average of three days. This led to many lost opportunities. Some customers would rather buy from other suppliers than wait for their late delivery.

The factory is losing $1,200 for every day of delay, an average loss of $3,600 for three days. Marcie's problem-solving team can't solve the issue. They used many root cause analysis tools, including the Why-Why Analysis, a.k.a. Five Whys.

Marcie is working under the illusion that he has already done many things to solve the problem, including the routine replacement of the contractual driver and his pahinante (porter) assigned by the supply chain service provider. There were times when they were successful in delivering on time. Then, they would return to their old ways, sometimes as late as five days!

It turns out, nothing could happen spontaneously unless you do something through trial and error. That's assuming you have enough time and the customers are willing to wait, which is a farfetched aspiration of lazy people.

So, what are the root causes of this problem? Initially, I thought of asking: "Why are you concerned about the performance of the service provider?" Marcie replied they can't go on and on routinely replacing their service provider. He is correct.