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April 20th Dinner Meeting |
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Root Cause Analysis (RCA) Tom Land, Cisco System Register by Noon Monday, April 17th, 2006 Wikipedia defines Root Cause Analysis (RCA) as a class of problem solving methods aimed at identifying the root causes of problems or events. The practice of RCA is predicated on the belief that problems are best solved by attempting to correct or eliminate root causes, as opposed to merely addressing the immediately obvious symptoms.
Root causes exist and can be found. It is ultimately about continuous improvement. It is a guiding philosophy that
says “find the real reasons for our problems, understand why they exist, and change the conditions that create
them!”
About Our Speaker Mr. Tom Land has spent the last two decades leading
process improvement teams in solving complex manufacturing
problems at AT&T, Lucent Technologies, OFS and
Trojan Battery Company. In addition to generic problems
such as capacity, throughput, and shipping performance,
these problems included diverse quality issues
such as plating thickness, solder mask encroachment,
open circuits, short circuits, delaminations, broken drill
bits, registration, wrong hole size, optical fiber breaks,
wrong color, and battery sealing problems. Even though the problems’ symptoms were diverse, the causes of the
problems were similar and the problem solving approach
was the same.
Mr. Land has recently joined Cisco Systems as a Staff
Quality Engineer. He holds a Bachelors Degree in
Chemical Engineering from Virginia Tech, a Masters
Degree in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University,
and an MBA from the University of Richmond. He is a
member of the Greater Atlanta Section of the American
Society for Quality and is both a Certified Quality
Engineer and a Certified Six Sigma Black Belt. He served
on the Board of Examiners for the 2004 Georgia
Oglethorpe Award. |