Fishbone Diagram

Fishbone Diagrams which are referred to as cause and effect diagrams are used to facilitate the thought process in analyzing an issue. It is a very useful tool and can be used to analyze problems within several areas of a business. Below is a fishbone diagram analyzed step by step.

I- Identifying the problem

The problem which was identified to be solved and to analyze its causes is: Customer orders for custom mountain bikes are delivered 4 weeks later than regular mountain bikes.

II- Identifying the major categories of causes of the problem:

-People

-Machinery and Equipment

-Methods

-Materials

III- Identifying causes and subcauses

Major Category Cause Sub-Cause Sub-Sub-Cause

People Few skilled workers to build custom bikes Low employee retention rate Low salaries and few employee benefits

Machinery and Equipment Frequent breakdowns Lack of maintenance

Product changeover times longer for custom bikes

Methods Poor building SOP procedures No records of standards or procedures

Materials Materials and parts not readily available Not many custom special parts in warehouse Long lead time for parts

Parts range too big

IV- Building the fishbone diagram

V- Analyzing the fishbone diagram

The problem identified here is the custom mountain bikes are taking more time (4 weeks) to be delivered than regular mountain bikes. The Major Categories are People, Machinery and equipment, Methods,and Materials.

Under the first category "People", the major cause is that there are few skilled workers to build the custom bikes. This shows that there are not enough skilled workers and the sub cause for this is that the workers are leaving the company due to the employee retention rate which was found to be low. The root cause for this is that workers are not receiving a good salary in addition to not having good benefits.

Under the second category "Machinery and Equipment", there are two major causes. One of the causes is that the Machines are facing several breakdowns and this is due to the lack of maintenance. This means that the maintenance should be done more frequently. The other major cause is that the product changeover takes more time to be done in custom bikes.

Under the third category "Methods", The major cause is that there