Which tool categorizes causes of failure in a problem-solving process?

The Fishbone Diagram, also known as the Ishikawa diagram or cause-and-effect diagram, is a highly effective tool used to categorize and visualize the causes of a failure in a specific problem-solving process. It assists teams in identifying various potential factors contributing to a problem, organizing these factors into primary categories, and enabling a systematic exploration of root causes.

In practice, the Fishbone Diagram allows users to brainstorm and categorize various issues, typically grouped into categories such as people, process, equipment, materials, environment, and management. This categorization helps teams understand the complexity of issues and encourages thorough investigation to pinpoint specific contributing factors. By visually structuring these elements, teams can address multiple dimensions of a problem instead of focusing only on the symptoms, enhancing the likelihood of identifying effective solutions.

The other options serve different purposes: the 5 Whys is focused on drilling down to the root cause through iterative questioning; the Run Chart is utilized for tracking changes over time to observe trends; and the Pareto Chart helps prioritize issues based on their impact or frequency, following the principle that a small number of causes often contribute to most of the problems. While useful in their own right, these tools do not offer the same systematic categorization of causes found in the Fish