Inquiry into the Use of Five Whys in Industry

Methodology/Approach: A survey was sent to organizations previously identified for an unrelated survey. The survey was sent to 98 organizations in Poland and 47 organizations responded. There were four respondents who reported being unfamiliar with five whys and their responses were discarded. The reported uses of five whys were assessed using a Chi-square goodness of fit test. The way in which five whys is used, either as a brainstorming tool or a method that requires investigation, and the purpose of five whys were compared to the intended use using a hypothesis test of two proportions. The quality tools used with five whys was then assessed using a Chi-square goodness of fit test.
Findings: Although more respondents use five whys as a root cause analysis (RCA) tool, the difference was not statistically significant. Respondents who used five whys with investigation used five whys as both a method for quality improvement and RCA more often than those who used five whys as a brainstorming tool without investigation. There was no statistically significant difference in using five whys for RCA and those who used five whys as a brainstorming tool reported using five whys for quality improvement more often. Although many different quality tools were reported, the Ishikawa diagram is by far the quality tool used the most with five whys.
Research Limitation/Implication: This paper used a survey that was limited to one region of Poland.
Originality/Value of paper: This paper provides the first insights into the use of five whys in organizations; as a method for quality improvement, RCA, or both.