Lessons Learned System SP

Converting Facts to Knowledge

What does one do with a new kind of data? Can it be transformed into new knowledge? And if so, how can that knowledge be applied? Those are the issues with which this article deals.

Producing REASON® Data

A critical element in determining the utility of Lessons Learned is the fundamental design by which data are generated and recorded. The lesson must be more than a narrative report of what happened with subjective suggestions of how recurrence can be avoided. To understand why REASON generates new knowledge requires us to understand how and why REASON data are unique both in content and in form. When we seek data that may qualify as knowledge, we seek a way to generate facts in a consistent criteria framework, so that each fact has the same degree of accuracy, relevance. The REASON process meets these data criteria through a set of causal logic rules and criteria for accuracy and completeness of data.

Operations Improvement

REASON data enable you to objectively measure and compare the prevention benefits and cost-effectiveness of dealing with each identified systemic root cause. At this most basic level, the REASON data impart new knowledge that can be used by executive managers to support better decision making.

Risk Assessment

Within the REASON data are found the ways in which conditions, actions and inactions combined to produce counter-quality in the particular environment. Operations risk can be directly equated with lack of control. REASON provides hard numbers and insights into the sources and characteristics of risk. The REASON data are modeled to show what kinds of factors combined into sets. For example, in one operation might be found a pattern revealing that many conditions lie waiting for just one human action to precipitate production delays. One might discover that when maintenance problems occur, each has several inactions associated with the problem, things that were not done to avoid the problem. When these patterns are visible and quantified, they provide new knowledge that supports better planning, controls and decisions.

Change Management

Whether your definition of change management is finding and implementing the smallest incremental change that will reestablish stability in your operations, or making sweeping changes to alter the culture of your organization, your perceptions of the problem, your solutions and your actions to implement will be predicated upon some form of internal data that points to the need for change. Access and application of REASON® data provide an early visibility of developing trends and patterns, and expose the interactions within the environment that threaten to produce problems. REASON® provides an objective means to measure and study the systems that may require change, and thus provides a practical and tangible means to deal with the old truism that you can’t manage what you can’t measure.

Knowledge Management

One of the more intriguing aspects of REASON® data is that it views counter-quality from an organizational perspective. The REASON® format accepts counter-quality data from all organizational problems that can range from an equipment breakdown, to an occupational injury, to a lost sale, to a missed delivery schedule. REASON® forms the data within the organization into a single context that reveals basic systemic facts that go beyond process function and area boundaries. Thus, one can gain visibility of how the effects of all of the organization’s business processes are dynamically interacting and combining to produce problems.

What produced the causes?

The focus of REASON® is upon what produced the causes . . . not what the causes produced. Therein lies the significance of REASON® Lessons Learned data. REASON goes beyond immediate causes to uncover ways to improve business processes. With REASON® visibility of the exact causal systems and how those causal systems interact within your organization, it is possible to better engineer counter-quality out of your organization.

Ancillary Activities

In addition to analyzing your significant problems, you might decide to examine your operations for pervasive causal systems that combine in different ways in different parts of your organization to produce different kinds of problems. These are the ones that do not show up on the screen when events are viewed and assessed by results only. When you uncover one of these causes that is shared in common among a group of minor losses, you will have discovered a source of day-to-day problems that will produce a broad and meaningful improvement benefit when removed. This capability is a direct result of the quality of data produced by the REASON® inquiry process.

Strategic Planning

When dealing with strategic issues like customer and vendor relationships, competitive marketing and sales strategies, financial planning and operations projections, REASON® data can supplement and expand executive knowledge of internal status and changes.

With REASON® Lessons Learned data, the control effectiveness of the management structure can be measured and compared. The degree to which current management and supervision are performing to implement policies can be measured, ranked and compared. Internal systems can be benchmarked, measured and compared.

For more information of the REASON® Lessons Learned System and its benefits, please contact us at (903) 236-9973.

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