THE Northern Echo and BKR Haines Watts have teamed up to give world-class manufacturing advice to companies in the Tees Valley.

This week, Paul Bell, of BKR Haines Watts, looks at the five whys.

The Five Whys is a technique for encouraging people to address root causes of problems, rather than symptoms.

The process was invented by Toyota, which had become concerned that too many staff were simply stating what a problem was, rather than curing it.

It involves asking the question "why" five times.

For example, "The maintenance department is useless". Why? "We keep having the same thing go wrong again and again". Why? "No one fixes things properly, they just patch them up". Why? "The engineers are always in a hurry to move on to another job". Why? "The engineers have too many jobs to do". Why? "Two of the team have been on long-term sick leave for months".

In this case, there is a need to prioritise the maintenance workload and to add extra resource in the short term.

Top Tip: Do not let the Five Whys process place all blame on external factors, such as the strong pound or world terrorism. Plan for success, even in adverse conditions.

l Paul Bell is the manufacturing and business improvement manager for BKR Haines Watts, working with local companies to improve their performance and profitability.

He can be contacted on (01325) 254700.