Justification Tools & Techniques

Course Description

This course provides an in-depth understanding of RCI’s Opportunity Analysis (OA) approach to identifying the most significant opportunities in any system. The course is designed to provide a vehicle to comb existing weak operating systems in order to find the Significant Few (the 20% of the failure modes causing 80% of the system losses) opportunities for improvement. A detailed comprehension of how to perform OA on the weak systems will be applied so the maximum bottom-line results can be achieved. The attendees will learn how to physically perform an OA, as well as, how to develop a report that details the OA results, and how to present their findings to management for review and action. The course will also cover decision-by-pairs which is a technique used to prioritize a list of items in their order of importance to the decision-makers.

The technique measures each item with all the other items to provide a structured model for determining their order of importance in the overall scope of the decision making process. The course also covers how to prioritize using a Priority Matrix. This prioritization tool consists of a 3 X 3 matrix in which items are positioned for “ease of solution” on an “X” axis and impact on a “Y” axis by assigning numbers 1, 3, or 5 to each of the parameters depending on severity. Items to be prioritized are then numbered and these numbers slotted into the matrix to determine ease of solution and impact upon resolution.

Course Objective:

Upon completion of this course, the attendee will:

1. Understand how to perform an Opportunity Analysis (OA) to determine the appropriate candidates for a detailed RCA.
2. Understand how to perform decision-by-pairs for prioritizing daily decision making activities.
3. Understand how to use a priority matrix to determine ease of solution.

Learning Outcomes:

At the end of this course, you will learn:

• Write concise failure definitions that provide a single focus point for OA efforts.
• Develop a global contact flow diagram for use in determining failure modes.
• Determine problem priorities using OA. Perform a “gap analysis” of the status quo and optimum capabilities to determine potential benefit.
• Validate the OA using the gap analysis as the key.
• Communicate the findings of the OA, and make the necessary recommendations for realizing the potential opportunities in a meeting with management.
• Write a full report on the analysis including a description of the problem event, how the analysis was performed, what was learned from the analysis and how to correct the identified problems.
• Perform a decision-by-pairs on a number of items by identifying the highest priority to the least.
• Utilize a priority matrix to determine the recommendation that is easiest to implement and has the highest impact.