Root cause and corrective actions

Root cause is where a repeating problem is investigated, and where the actions that come out of the investigation are followed until somebody can say whether they worked. Open it from Assets → Root Cause.

If you don’t see this in your navigation, your administrator can switch the module on under Administration → Modules, or it may not be included in your plan.

The Root cause screen, with its header counts and the list of investigations

An investigation that reaches a root cause changes nothing on its own. What changes something is an action, done, verified, and found afterwards to have worked — which is why the screen tracks actions as closely as investigations.

The header

Figure	What it means
investigations	How many investigations are on record
actions overdue	Actions past their due date and not done
did not work	Actions somebody reviewed and found had not fixed the problem

The third is the figure the screen exists for: an action completed, verified and then reviewed as ineffective is the register saying the diagnosis was wrong. Two notices appear above the tabs whenever they apply — actions reviewed and found not to have worked, and actions completed that nobody has verified — and each jumps to the Actions tab. Open an investigation starts a new one. The screen has three tabs: Investigations, Actions and Failures, each with a count.

Investigations

Column	What it means
Reference	The investigation number, such as RCA-2026-00001. Click to open it
Subject	The asset or place being investigated
What is being investigated	The problem statement
Status	Open, in progress, concluded or cancelled
Findings	How many findings have been recorded
Actions open	Actions not yet finished. A concluded investigation with actions still open is flagged — a diagnosis nobody has treated
Opened	How long ago

Opening an investigation

Open an investigation opens a form above the list.

The Open an investigation form, asking for an asset or a place, the problem statement, a method and a due date

Field	What it means	Notes
Asset	The asset being investigated	Give an asset or a place
Or a place	The site or area the pattern is at, when the problem is not one machine	Give an asset or a place
What is being investigated	One sentence, agreed before anybody starts	Required. It stays at the top of the investigation as the problem statement
Method	Five Whys — a chain, Fishbone — grouped causes, Fault tree — branches with gates, or Something else	Decides how the findings are drawn
Due	When the investigation should conclude	Optional, and worth setting — an investigation with no date is one nobody is waiting for

Open creates it and opens it. A Reliability Repeat fault recommendation is usually what prompts one.

Inside an investigation

An investigation using Five Whys, with its chain of findings, the root cause marked and two actions

The header shows the reference and subject, and counts findings, actions and those still open. Below it, What is being investigated shows the problem statement, the status, the method, when it was opened and who leads it.

Findings

The findings are drawn the way the method reads:

Method	How findings are drawn	Adding one
Five Whys	The chain — indented steps, each answering “why?” about the one above	And why is that? under a step; Start another chain for a second line of reasoning
Fishbone	Causes, by category — one level, grouped by bone	Add, then choose Which bone
Fault tree	The fault tree — branches, each able to say how the causes beneath it combine	Add underneath, then choose a gate
Something else	A plain list	Add

Each finding has:

Field	What it means
Why? Because… / The cause	The statement — what you believe
Evidence — what makes this more than a guess	What supports it. A finding with confirmed evidence shows as evidenced; change the evidence afterwards and it stops being evidenced, because whoever confirmed it confirmed something else
Which bone	Fishbone only — the category
How the causes beneath this combine	Fault tree only — No gate, AND — all of the causes beneath, or OR — any one of the causes beneath

This is the root cause marks a finding as a root cause; Not the root cause takes the mark off. More than one finding can be marked.

Concluding

Write What the investigation concluded and press Conclude.

Concluding needs at least one finding marked as the root cause. Until one is, Conclude stays disabled and the screen says Nothing is marked as the root cause yet. Mark the finding the investigation points to, above. A conclusion with nothing behind it is an opinion.

Actions

Add under Actions records a corrective or preventive action.

Field	What it means	Notes
What is to be done	The action	Required
Kind	Corrective — fix this one or Preventive — stop it recurring
Against which finding	The finding it answers, or The investigation as a whole
Owner	Who will do it
Due	When it should be done

The effectiveness review is set ninety days after the due date unless you say otherwise. A review dated the day the work finished would ask whether a change worked before anything had time to recur. Each action card shows its reference (CAPA-2026-00001), kind, standing, owner, due date, and — once they exist — the verification note and the review.

Actions

The Actions tab is the register of every corrective and preventive action, sorted by what each is waiting for rather than by date, so the ones needing a decision come first.

Columns: Reference, Kind, What is to be done, From (the investigation), Owner, Due and Standing.

Standing	What it means
did not work	Reviewed, and the problem came back
overdue	Not done, past its due date
awaiting effectiveness review	Verified, and the review date has arrived
awaiting verification	Marked done, and nobody has confirmed it
outstanding	Not done yet, still within its date
verified	Somebody has confirmed it was done
effective	Reviewed, and the problem stopped
closed	Finished with

Button	When it appears	What it records
Mark done	The action is outstanding or overdue	That the action has been carried out. Somebody still has to verify it
Verify	The action is outstanding, overdue or awaiting verification	That you have seen it done. Verifying is deliberately a separate act from completing
Did it work?	The action has been verified and not yet reviewed	Whether the problem stopped — It worked, It did not, or Not yet — with What has happened since

It did not is a result, not a failure to record one.

Failures

The Failures tab lists work orders that have been classified — what failed, why and how.

Column	What it means
Work order	The job that dealt with the failure
Component	The asset or component that failed
Mode	What failed — Excessive vibration or noise
Cause	Why — Misalignment or imbalance
Mechanism	How, physically — Fatigue
Severity	How serious it was
happened before	Marked where the same failure has occurred on that component before, worked out across the whole history rather than the page on screen
Classified	When it was classified

A work order only becomes a failure when somebody says what kind of failure it was; until then the product can count downtime but can say nothing about modes. Keeping the three lists apart is the point: bearing seized is a mode, misalignment is a cause and fatigue is a mechanism, and a chart of “bearing failure” tells nobody whether to buy a better coupling or train a fitter. The lists are kept under the failure taxonomy.

Who can do what

Permission	What it allows
View RCA and CAPA	See the register, investigations, actions and failures
Run RCA and CAPA	Open investigations, add findings and actions, conclude, mark done, verify and review
Record failures and downtime	Classify a failure on a work order — a much wider permission, held by supervisors and technicians too

See roles for the defaults.

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Root cause and corrective actions

The header

Investigations

Opening an investigation

Inside an investigation

Findings

Concluding

Actions

Actions

Failures

Who can do what