Who this is for: Needs Manage Root Cause.
Fishbone is the right choice when a problem looks systemic — where several factors have combined rather than one thing having failed.
The method organises possible causes into six fields — People, Process, Equipment, Environment, Materials and Management. Work through each and note any factors that may have contributed.
Field | Look for |
People | Training gaps, human error, lack of awareness |
Process | Inadequate procedures, poor controls, missing steps |
Equipment | Maintenance failures, calibration issues, tooling |
Environment | Workspace conditions, temperature, layout |
Materials | Defective inputs, wrong specification, supplier issues |
Management | Lack of oversight, unclear responsibility, resource gaps |
Not every field will apply. Leave the ones that do not. The value is in the combined picture — when three of the six point the same way, you have found something a single-chain method would have missed.
Once you have filled in a method, Root Cause Category becomes required — you cannot save the analysis without one. See 7.9.
Whether Fishbone is available to your auditors at all is set in Audit Settings → Records & Findings, alongside the other methods and whether the analysis can be skipped.
Related: 7.6 5 Whys · 7.8 Fault Tree Analysis · 7.9 Selecting a root cause category