Why does the same problem come back in your company every month?

2026-10-31 | Intagya ERP

At the month-end meeting the operations manager says returns went up. The warehouse lead blames the supplier. The supplier blames the shipping company. The meeting ends with a well-worded decision, and next month the same figures are back.

The people are not the problem here. Each of them is describing the part they can see.

Why is knowing there is a problem not enough?

A dashboard tells you the rate went up, not why. Decide before you know the cause and you treat the symptom: you train staff over a mistake caused by weak packing, or you press a supplier who had nothing to do with it.

What is a fishbone analysis, simply put?

A fishbone analysis is a page that makes you look in every direction before you judge. The problem goes in the head, and you ask about six sides: people, machines, methods, materials, measurement and environment. Its value is that it stops the talk from staying on the loudest side.

Why does it fail when it is drawn on a whiteboard?

Because it rests on memory. Whoever attends writes what they remember, and the loudest voice fills the most bones. A week later the board is wiped and not one figure is left to compare with.

What changes when the causes come from system moves?

When the reason for each return is recorded as it happens, the question stops being what we remember and becomes what the figures say. That turns the fishbone into a daily working tool, not a meeting drawing. In Intagya ERP the Root cause tab reads these moves, adds what your team knows and the system cannot see, and ranks everything by weight.

Start with one problem that really hurts. Do not open ten in one week.

Read the root cause guide