Six Sigma Inter-relational Diagrams Meeting #4

Now that we have identified our root causes of failures in our processes, we are going to see if these root causes are related to each other. We did this by using a Visio diagram, where each of the root causes was represented by a box. For simplicity’s sake, let’s say there were 3 root causes: Root Cause #1, #2 and #3.

We asked ourselves is root cause #1 related to #2, if yes, draw an arrow from Root Cause #1 to #2, else do nothing. Then we asked is root cause #1 related to root cause #3, if yes, draw an arrow, else do nothing.

Then we ask the same but from the perspective of root cause #2. We ask is root cause #2 related to #1 and #3, if so, draw appropriate arrows, otherwise do nothing.

The purpose of this exercise was to identify which root cause is related to the others the most.

We were left with a very convoluted Visio diagram. In hindsight, maybe we should have used an Excel Matrix or used Layers in Visio. Hopefully though, I’ll be able to write a macro for Visio that will count the number of outgoing arrow connectors.