Abstract

While the cause and effect of a problem is important to examine, it is just as important to delineate the essence of a problem—its defect or where it fails to match up—along with its appearance—its manifestations or symptoms. Both the effect and the essence of the problem are usually localized together on a product containing a defect, and these are found by working backwards after the problem has made its appearance in the form of symptoms. The cause, however, will not be found on any product and must be determined somewhere in a process that creates the product with the defect.v