The Five Whys: Another Example
Posted on January 18, 2012 | in Baseball, Lean Tools, Maintenance, Sponsorships, Sports | by Chad Walters

Who doesn’t love team mascots on motorized vehicles? The idea of a moose or raccoon or a…Phanatic on an ATV – hilarious!
Well, I do know of an example of a problem that has occurred at least once where the mascot’s ATV was out of commission. Let’s do another five whys analysis to figure out what happened.
- Problem: The sponsor did not receive adequate exposure during the game.
- Why didn’t the sponsor receive adequate exposure? Their between-innings promotion did not occur.
- Why didn’t the promotion occur? The mascot’s ATV was unavailable for use.
- Why was the ATV unavailable? Before the ATV was to be used, the mascot saw it had a flat tire and didn’t have time to refill it.
- Why was there not enough time to refill the flat tire? Because it wasn’t checked early enough before the promotion.
- Why wasn’t it checked early enough before the promotion? There was no plan in place to check it regularly in a timely fashion.
So in the end, the sponsor’s promotion couldn’t happen because there was no proper protocol for checking the tires in a timely manner.
(And yes, there are multiple branches off of each of the questions that could show multiple causes for the lack of exposure – the simplicity of the five whys tool promotes flexibility and identification of multiple causes, but the key is that they are all directly linked to the primary problem.)
TAGS: atv,
five whys,
flat,
lean,
lean blitz,
mascot,
moose,
operations,
phanatic,
processes,
promotions,
raccoon,
sponsors,
sports,
tire,
waste
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