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| Criterion |  Operations Root Cause Analysis |  Decision Making Trade-off Analysis |  Operations Kepner-Tregoe |  Operations Failure Mode and Effects Analysis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | 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. | With limited resources, quality, speed, cost, and risk almost always compete with each other. Trade-off Analysis makes these tensions explicit and prevents decisions from producing hidden side effects. | For a disturbance that's hard to pin down, the method cleanly separates problem, cause, and decision. It reduces mixing when symptoms allow several interpretations. | For a process, product, or service with noticeable failure risks, the method assesses possible failure modes in advance. It directs attention to combinations of occurrence, effect, and detectability. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Medium | High | High |
Timedifferent | 1-4 h | 45-120 min | 2-8 h | 2-6 h |
Participantsdifferent | 3-8 | 2-8 | 2-8 | 3-10 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Problem Statement, Cause Hypotheses, Confirmed Causes, Action Plan | Trade-off Matrix, Criteria List, Decision Rationale, Accepted Downsides | Problem Analysis, Decision Analysis, Risk Plan | FMEA Table, Risk Priority, Mitigation Actions |
Tagsno overlap | Root causeProblem solvingQualityIncident | TradeoffsDecisionCriteriaOptions | Problem solvingRoot causeDecisionOperations | RiskQualityOperationsRoot cause |