See Mark the quality manager.

See Mark’s root cause analysis

program thrive with RC Pro™.

Mark is in charge of quality at a

major food production company
with over 30 sites throughout
North America. Today he’s
learned that one of the sites in
Pennsylvania has encountered
a problem with contaminated
water, and he’s got to figure
out what to do.

Luckily, Mark’s company started

using RC Pro™ several months ago
so that’s where he’ll turn first.
RC Pro™ is the software equivalent
of a Swiss Army knife – all kinds
of handy tools rolled up into one
compact, easy-to-use package.
STEP 1
Mark pulls up his company’s web-based
Contamination

RC Pro™ database and does a search

for “contamination.” He sees that a site
in Calgary had a similar contamination
issue in the past, and he’s able to pull up
evidence, reference files, and a cause-and-
effect chart, as well as see what corrective
actions were taken and by whom.

STEP 2
Though the two contamination incidents
have some things in common, they aren’t
exactly the same, so Mark decides to
do a separate root cause analysis (RCA)
investigation for the new event, keeping
in mind the learnings from the previous
event. He puts together a team to help
him do a thorough investigation.

As he enters his data into RC Pro™,

the software creates a visual cause-
and-effect chart that helps make the
details of the event clear to other
team members and management.
 STEP 3
Now that his RCA investigation is
complete and he has a list of effective
solutions in hand, Mark assigns actions
to Joe and Roger. RC Pro™ will send
them reminders when their tasks are
due, and Joe and Roger can update
the system once they’re done.

Since everyone can be logged into the system

at once, the whole team can see what’s being
done in real time. Mark has more time to focus
on getting work done since he doesn’t have
to constantly follow up with everyone else to
make sure they’re on task.

STEP 4
Mark reviews all the files that the team
has uploaded to RC Pro™ to make sure
everything is there – photos and equipment
data related to the contamination issue,
reference documents, and documentation
of corrective actions taken. Now he can
close out the RCA. Anyone can look back
and find all the pertinent info related to this
RCA investigation. Plus, RC Pro™ is linked to
the company’s corrective and preventative
actions (CAPA) software, so it makes all the
important details easy to find if they should
ever be audited.
 STEP 5
As Mark prepares for his quarterly
quality presentation to the management
team, he uses RC Pro™ to generate
detailed individual reports on the RCA
investigations he’s executed as well
as a high-level snapshot of the RCA
program’s ROI as a whole.

Without spending much time at all, he’s

now armed with a comprehensive,
easy-to-read set of charts, graphs, and
tables showing just how effective his
RCA program has been, and how much
money it’s saved the company.

STEP 6
High fives all around!

ARMS Reliability is an authorized global training provider of the Apollo Root Cause Analysis methodology.
RealityCharting® and RC Pro™ are the software tools that support the Apollo Root Cause Analysis methodology.