by Nathanael Okhuysen
When something goes wrong, especially in a large organization, there can be an instinct to point fingers and shift blame. This probably isn’t the best way to prevent the problem from arising in the future though. Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of Toyota Motor Company, developed the “5 Whys” process, a type of root cause analysis, to identify and fix problems that arose within the company. It has since been widely adopted as part of lean manufacturing, Kaizen, and Six Sigma methodology.