scope:

This International Standard describes the basic principles of root cause analysis (RCA) and specifies the steps that a process for RCA should include.

This standard identifies a number of attributes for RCA techniques which assist with the selection of an appropriate technique. It describes each RCA technique and its relative strengths and weaknesses.

RCA is used to analyse the root causes of focus events with both positive and negative outcomes, but it is most commonly used for the analysis of failures and incidents. Causes for such events can be varied in nature, including design processes and techniques, organizational characteristics, human aspects and external events. RCA can be used for investigating the causes of non-conformances in quality (and other) management systems as well as for failure analysis, for example in maintenance or equipment testing.

RCA is used to analyse focus events that have occurred, therefore this standard only covers a posteriori analyses. It is recognized that some of the RCA techniques with adaptation can be used proactively in the design and development of items and for causal analysis during risk assessment; however, this standard focuses on the analysis of events which have occurred.

The intent of this standard is to describe a process for performing RCA and to explain the techniques for identifying root causes. These techniques are not designed to assign responsibility or liability, which is outside the scope of this standard.