M4E #46: The Jefferson Memorial and the 5 Whys

If you have children “why?” is probably one of the most heard words in your life. Don’t ever correct them and let them ask that! (at least for 5 times). The 5 Whys is a problem-solving technique that involves asking "why" five times to identify the root cause of a problem. This method aims to address the underlying cause rather than just treating symptoms that are only several layers up from the real problem. The next video from Jerilyn Edginton shows a real example of the application of this method.

Time for Insights

• Do you imagine where this tool has been created? The 5 Whys technique was developed by Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of Toyota Industries, as part of the Toyota Production System in the 1930s. It became a fundamental tool within the Toyota manufacturing system and has since been widely adopted in various industries as a problem-solving and root cause analysis method.

• Burn this sentence from the video in your memory: “It makes you wonder how many airports we’ve moved lately because we stopped asking why“. Don’t hesitate to ask why as many times as needed.

• There has been several approaches looking for improvements in this method. In this article for example the authors propose to add the “Why not?” question in each step in order with the purpose of adding an induction way to a mostly deductive technique.