Some time ago, a company asked for a review of their manufacturing environment. Immediately it was noticed that management did not allow a manager to blame an employee’s actions as the root cause in a safety or quality incident investigation – even if the employee blatantly violated a procedure or rule. Certainly, this follows Dr. W. Edwards Deming’s principles.
In one example uncovered, an employee was grinding metal without wearing safety glasses and got injured when a metal fragment got in his eye. The accident’s root cause was not that the employee was ignoring the rules. Not following the safety rules was the cause of the accident, but not its root cause.
