Fishbone Analysis Fishbone Analysis(also called Ishikawa Diagrams or Cause and effect diagrams) is an effective visual and analytical

tool to understand the very minute root causes of a problem, and understand issues in a robust cause-effect paradigm. This analysis is a combination of thorough brainstorming and visual depiction of the causes of a problem in the manner of a fishbone. These causes can typically be related to any or some or all of: People, Methods, Machines, Materials, Measurements, or the Environmental conditions. In Service Industries, these causes are normally of the following categories: 1. Policies 2. Procedures 3. People 4. Plant/Technology These categories form different branches of our fishbone diagram:

This diagram is the basic template or framework for our analysis. We begin our cause-effect analysis by first identifying the problem that we are facing in the context of our service. Let's assume, for our example, that we are operating a fast food restaurant, and while we are able to deal with small orders, we are facing problems in providing large orders in a timely manner, and a lot of customers are getting turned away because we are taking too long with large orders. Let's frame this problem as a question - "Why are we taking so much time to complete large orders?" The next step is to take this problem question and brainstorm on the possible answers by identifying different causes. For each cause, we ask the question 'Why is this happening'. We also label these causes based on the above categories(we can modify categories based on relevance). Some probable causes are: 1. Understaffed -- This is a 'people' problem. This could happen due to unavailability of skilled cooks or lack of revenue.

2. Available equipment is not enough for handling large orders -- This is a 'technology' problem. This could happen if available resources like stove tops, cooking equipment, standing space, refrigeration space, etc are a bottleneck. 3. Basic ingredients are unprepared -- Most restaurants operate by preparing all the basic elements or ingredients of their dishes, so that when an order comes, all the cook has to do is heat everything together once. For example, a Chinese restaurant keeps its noodles boiled and dried, its sauces prepared, vegetables cut, the meat is diced and fried and all the spices are kept together, so that once an order for a dish of noodles comes in, all the cook has to do is stir-fry all the relevant ingredients together. It is possible that this preparation is lacking, and therefore unnecessary repetition of tasks is taking place, and eating away lots of operation time. This is a typical 'procedure' issue. 4. Orders are not being combined properly: Normally in restaurants, to reduce order redundancy, a waiter takes several orders at once, so that the cook can cook them together. So if 3 people order 2 plates of pasta each, he can give the combined order to the cook, so that 6 plates can be cooked at once, saving crucial time. If the waiters are not following this technique, a lot of resources and time can get wasted. This could be a 'procedure' issue if proper procedures are not in place, and could be a 'people' issue if the waiters are not following the instructions properly. Once these causes are identified, we have to study our operations carefully, and find out why these causes are taking place and affecting our operations. Once the exact reasons and causes are identified, it can be visually depicted as follows:

This analysis thus helps us fully understand the causes of the problems facing our service operations.