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| Criterion |  Engineering Kanban |  Operations Fishbone Diagram |  Operations 5 Whys |  Operations Root Cause Analysis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | When work sits in too many parallel streams, throughput suffers and no one sees the bottlenecks. Kanban makes the flow of work visible and limits overload so a system becomes calmer and more predictable. | When a problem has several possible contributing factors, the method sorts causes by cause areas. It prevents an initial hunch from blocking the view of other plausible drivers. | For a single, hard-to-explain deviation, the method exposes the causal chain behind the visible symptom. It keeps the cause open until a controllable condition emerges instead of a mere description. | 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. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Low | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | Ongoing | 30-60 min | 15-30 min | 1-4 h |
Participantsdifferent | 2-12 | 2-8 | 2-6 | 3-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Kanban board, WIP policies, Flow metrics | Fishbone Diagram, Cause Categories, Investigation Backlog | Root cause notes, Countermeasures | Problem Statement, Cause Hypotheses, Confirmed Causes, Action Plan |
Tagsno overlap | FlowVisual managementDelivery | Root causeQualityOperations | Root causeIncidentLeanProblem solving | Root causeProblem solvingQualityIncident |