Chef’s Special: Ishikawa Fish(bone)

Is your company hungry for a strategy to help employees make the most-informed decisions possible? If so, a decision making tool like the Ishikawa diagram is what your company is craving. Fully understanding your situation and evaluating the potential effects of options are key to making successful decisions. Decision making tools can help.

Ishikawa Fishbone
This fish-shaped diagram helps illustrate cause-and-effect relationships. First, employees identify a problem, shown as the head. Main causes are brainstormed and categorized, creating the fins. Typical categories include equipment, materials, methods, personnel and environment. Then, effects of main causes are listed, building the small bones. Completing this diagram helps analyze the problem and starts discussions about its root causes. Decisions can then be made to correct the source of the problem.

House Specials
Many other tools are available if the Ishikawa diagram doesn’t suit your company’s taste. Use these tools alone or together to improve your decision making process.

Pareto Chart. According to the Pareto Principle, usually 80 percent of the trouble is caused by 20 percent of the problems. Pareto charts are bar graphs that rank identified problems by their frequency. This allows you to prioritize and tackle your main problems first.

Decision Tree. Each possible decision can affect your company differently. Decision trees can help you choose between different courses of action by identifying each decision’s effects. The trunk of the tree represents the problem that needs solving. Possible solutions are the tree limbs and anticipated results of solutions are branches.

A force field analysis can help your company identify the pros and cons of a decision by looking at the forces pushing for and against it. Decision wheels can illustrate how far-reaching the results of a single decision are, and process flow charts and scatter diagrams are useful for studying how various steps in your processes work together.

Additional Resources
Ishikawa
United States Bureau of Reclamation
University of Alberta

Pareto Principle
Purdue University
United States Bureau of Reclamation
Quality Assurance Project

Decision Tree
Mind Tools

Force Field
Mind Tools
Iowa State University Extension
The Managers Electronic Resource Center

Decision Wheels
Silos & Smokestacks National Heritage Area

Process Flow Charts
Clemson University Department of Industrial Engineering

Scatter Diagrams
United States Bureau of Reclamation