CEI EN 62740

This International Standard describes the basic principles of
root cause analysis (RCA) and specifies the steps that a process
for RCA should include.

This standard identifies a number of attributes for RCA
techniques which assist with the selection of an appropriate
technique. It describes each RCA technique and its relative
strengths and weaknesses.

RCA is used to analyse the root causes of focus events with both
positive and negative outcomes, but it is most commonly used for
the analysis of failures and incidents. Causes for such events can
be varied in nature, including design processes and techniques,
organizational characteristics, human aspects and external events.
RCA can be used for investigating the causes of non-conformances in
quality (and other) management systems as well as for failure
analysis, for example in maintenance or equipment testing.

RCA is used to analyse focus events that have occurred,
therefore this standard only covers a posteriori analyses. It is
recognized that some of the RCA techniques with adaptation can be
used proactively in the design and development of items and for
causal analysis during risk assessment; however, this standard
focuses on the analysis of events which have occurred.

The intent of this standard is to describe a process for
performing RCA and to explain the techniques for identifying root
causes. These techniques are not designed to assign responsibility
or liability, which is outside the scope of this standard.