Characteristics & Changes: Fast track to identify relevant changes

As we have seen already, in a stabilized process, any deviation from an established level of performance is because something or things have changed. The problem is that we are changing things all the time: equipment parts, materials, process parameters, production rates, people, operating procedures, environmental conditions… so when you are confronted with a deviation from a norm or standard, the immediate issue you have to deal with is to identify the relevant change or combination of changes.

Doing a timeline will obviously help but without a filter to help zoom in on the really critical changes, you can still lose a lot of valuable time investigating all the different possibilities you are faced with.

With the Characteristics and Changes methodology, we build on what you learnt in our Advanced IS- IS NOT Problem Analysis course to quickly converge on the vital few. This makes it a particularly useful technique when you either have a very large range of possible causes to investigate ( a typical situation when brainstorming techniques like the Fishbone diagram are used) or, more rarely, none at all.

Given this, Characteristics and Changes is a must for anyone : Maintenance Engineers, Field Service Engineers, Reliability Engineers, Process Engineers, Installation Managers… who works on the resolution of complex technical problems.

What will you learn?

Designed to take you to the next level of insight concerning the problem situation under study, with our on-line Characteristics and Changes training course you will learn the following:

How to identify what characterizes the IS situation, where the problem is observed, compared to the IS NOT situation where the problem is not observed.
How to use these characteristics to identify the most relevant changes implemented during the period of reference.
How to use both the characteristics and the changes to establish a short list of plausible possible causes

Course Content.

Two interactive on-line training modules:
- Characteristics & Changes Theory: Introduction to the 3 steps of the Characteristics & Changes methodology illustrated through an example
- Characteristics & Changes Practise: Based on a particularly rich case study, a guided, self-evaluation exercise to ensure understanding of all the concepts presented in the theory module
One “homework” exercise + corrected solution

Bonus: You can use the case studies provided in both the practice module and the homework exercise of this course to get further practical experience with the prior steps of our problem-solving approach: Event Mapping & IS - IS NOT Problem Analysis

Time required.

Depending on how you go about the practice exercises that are proposed, doing them completely including Event Mapping and complete IS – IS NOT Problem Analysis or only doing the Characteristics & Changes exercises, this course can take between 2 and 4 hours.

Recommended prerequisites.

Very Important: The Characteristics and Changes course should only be taken when you are completely comfortable with the IS – IS NOT Problem Analysis methodology.

CoThink Academy (En)

Senior Instructors

All instructors from CoThink gained their problem solving experience by doing it as part of their job either in Industry: Food, Pharma, Steel, Chemicals, Mechanical Construction.. or in the I.T., Transportation, Energy sectors etc.

Besides that, all of us believe deeply in the benefits of structured processes where methodologies provide a common language and where visualisation greatly facilitates working together. It’s our passion to facilitate and train people, making your workplace a safer, better and more motivating place to be.