What is the Ishikawa Diagram for?

The Ishikawa diagram It is also known for its structure style as fishbone diagram, this consists of the graphic representation that allows to see the origin that contains a certain problem, this makes it a favorable tool for quality management, to be widely used in the orientation in the decision making by tackling the foundations that establish poor performance.

The use of this type of diagram is favorably complemented by the Pareto chart, which helps to give priority to various outstanding action measures in the causes that represent a high percentage of problems and that are mostly reduced in nominal terms.

It contains an intuitive structure that can identify a problem or effect and then classify all the causes that potentially explain their behavior. Each one of the causes can be broken down in more detail into sub-causes, which is very useful when carrying out the corrective actions, since it is very important to act precisely in relation to the problem that explains a behavior inadequate.

What is the Ishikawa Diagram for?

Making visual diagrams allows you to better organize, prioritize and process information, so that it can be more easily integrated into the previous knowledge base. It can be said that this type of diagram serves to be applied in a great variety of contexts in various ways, such as the following:

• Identify causes that are true about a certain situation and in turn allows them to be grouped by categories.
• help to improve processes.
• Encourage the quality of thinking on the part of the team, which is of great help in the contributions of ideas.
• Simplify the relationships that exist between the causes and effects of a process.
• Strengthen the ideas of the participants in relation to certain activities linked to a quality process.
• Acquire a globalized and structured view of a situation, due to the execution of identification of a set of basic factors.

How to make the Ishikawa Diagram?

To begin with, you must decide what quality characteristics, output or effect you want to examine and thus proceed to follow the elaboration steps that are set out below:

• Define in a brief and simple way the problem or effect that you want to solve.
• Put the problem inside a rectangle on the right hand side of the writing and draw a arrow, which will be the central axis of the diagram and should be pointing from left to right towards the trouble.
• Identify the possible causes that contribute to the problem under study.
• Identify the main causes and introduce them in the diagram.
• In the same way, the generalized causes that contribute to the problem should be identified, written in the box and connected directly with the central line.
• Add the secondary causes in each of the main branches.
• Add the new causes in the diagram and point them to the correct branch.
• Include subsidiary causes in the sub-areas that have been noted.
• Validate the logical check of the cause chains.
• From all this, an orderly diagram of the possible causes that contribute to a certain problem will be obtained.

Advantages and disadvantages of the Ishikawa Diagram

Next, the most relevant advantages and disadvantages of this cash will be mentioned diagram to identify problems:

Advantages Ishikawa Diagram

• They can allow an in-depth analysis that avoids separating the possible causes of a need.
• It is an easy technique to apply and its design represents a better vision to achieve a simple understanding of the causes, their categories and needs.
• It is used to draw the team's attention to the situation in a globalized way, from the point of view of the causes that have an effect on a problem or need.
• Once the needs have been addressed, this diagram has the ability to indicate the weaknesses that are can be modified when they have already been presented and in this way causes that provide more difficulties.

Disadvantages Ishikawa Diagram

• Its simplicity can represent in the same way a strength or one soft spot, depending on the complexity.
• If you do not have the necessary conditions to draw and develop it, you can present an inefficient condition when identifying the causes and their relationships in a way correct.

When should the Ishikawa Diagram be used?

This application contains a wide variety of cases, therefore, it should be used in the following aspects:

• When a product or service is identified to analyze it and help improve its quality.
• If there is a need to address a problem or cause in a systematic way.
• If the opportunity to improve presents itself.
• When to analyze the various data sets.
• If you want to find the main causes of a problem and prioritize the establishment of solutions.
• By evaluating the before and after changes that arise during the process.
• If the data can be classified into categories.
• When the rank of each of the categories is really important.

Application of the Ishikawa Diagram in the needs assessment

This diagram is often used to assess needs that help to illustrate and reflect the link between various real causes of a problem. performance-related, as well as graphs relating expected needs to differences between expected and expected results. are real.

This application represents a pragmatic tool that can build a system of interventions that will help improve performance that is related to potential causes and complex.

Tips for making an Ishikawa Diagram

In order to develop an Ishikawa Diagram the following tips should be taken into account:

• You must be sure that the needs and characteristics are approved by the team before moving on to the diagram development phase.
• In the case of this diagram, it is possible to incorporate branches that have less information than other branches. This allows the division of the branches that are rather overloaded with information in several branches.
• It does not require too many words when filling in the diagram, however, all that are necessary should be included so that the causes have a good description.