Eventually all manufacturing processes will experience problems with non-conforming parts, equipment failure resulting in lost productivity or rework expenses and possible increased scrap. Even with the best quality systems, training and Statistical Process Control (SPC), problems can happen. What must be prevented are the repeat problems. The problems you thought were resolved only to reoccur. Repeat problems can be experienced in everyday life. If you compare a manufacturing process to a garden, the process problems would be the weeds in the garden. If you pull up a dandelion and don’t get the entire root it will just keep popping back up. It is much the same with manufacturing problems – if you don’t get to the root cause of the problem, it is eventually (if not frequently) going to re-occur. The goal of a Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is to get down to the true cause of the problem, the root cause.