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| Criterion |  Engineering Fault Isolation |  Operations Root Cause Analysis |  Engineering Hypothesis-Driven Troubleshooting |  Operations Barrier Analysis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | In technical failures, the visible symptom often gets mixed up with the actual cause. Fault Isolation narrows the fault space and progressively reduces which part of the system is truly affected. | When a problem keeps recurring and the cause stays unclear, the method exposes the underlying mechanism. It separates symptom, guess, and robust explanation from one another. | When systems fail unexpectedly, spontaneous attempts often produce more noise than insight. Hypothesis-driven Troubleshooting translates symptoms into testable assumptions and makes troubleshooting learnable. | For a risk that can only be managed through multiple layers of protection, the method examines the effectiveness of each barrier. It shows where safeguards are missing, too weak, or fail under real conditions. |
Complexitysame | Medium | Medium | Medium | Medium |
Timedifferent | 30-180 min | 1-4 h | 30-240 min | 2-4 h |
Participantsdifferent | 1-6 | 3-8 | 1-6 | 2-6 |
Formatsame | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Fault Isolation Map, Test Log, Excluded Hypotheses, Narrowed Fault Area | Problem Statement, Cause Hypotheses, Confirmed Causes, Action Plan | Hypothesis Log, Test Plan, Evidence Notes, Diagnosis Summary | Barrier Inventory, Failure Analysis per Barrier, Action Backlog |
Tagsno overlap | TroubleshootingDiagnosisEngineering | Root causeProblem solvingQualityIncident | TroubleshootingProblem solvingDiagnosis | Root causeSafetyIncident |